(January 21 to February 19)
AQUARIUS IS the sign of the Water Carrier and astrologers have long recognized that more famous people are born under this sign than under all the rest put together. The dualism of the sign explains this; the Water Carrier is always carrying water to somebody or something but whether it is hot water or cold water can rarely be determined in advance. Hot Water Aquarians are the prophets, the great conquerors and the dictators. Cold Water Aquarians are the philosophers, the satirists and the analytic thinkers. Those born under this sign should decide as early in life as possible which group they are best fitted to join. But do not be deceived: at first glance it appears easier to pour cold water on people and things than hot water, but remember that you may have to continue this for eighty years or more—because Aquarians are long-lived. For those in whom intellect is not a strong point, hot water is always best. A rare type of Aquarian is capable of pouring both hot and cold water—singly, both at once, or sometimes so mingled that the rare and valuable Lukewarm Aquarian emerges. The highest offices in the church, and the most prized editorial chairs await Aquarians so ambiguously gifted.
Your lucky colours are light blue, greeny-blue and bluey-violet. Your lucky flowers are the tulip, pansy and daffodil. Your lucky stones are the opal, sapphire, beryl and lapis-lazuli. This latter sounds better than it is, being a sort of sulphurous silicate; however, it is a very pretty blue. Wizard Marchbanks suggests that instead of wearing it, which might prove inconvenient, as it looks best in very large chunks, you bring it into the conversation casually. “Your eyes,” you say to any young woman whom you wish to impress, and who does not happen to be a geologist, “have the lovely, changing, mysterious shades of lapis-lazuli.” She will probably like this, as she has almost certainly never seen the stone in question and does not know that it is no more changeable in hue than the slate of a blackboard. Her appreciation will make it a lucky stone for you. Similarly, a young woman may say, at the right moment, “The night sky has an almost painful beauty—like lapis-lazuli.” Do not try this remark upon escorts of coarse nature, however, or third-year students of mining engineering.
Candour before everything: you must be on your guard against constipation. Don’t ask me why. Nobody has ever died of it, and the old wives’ tale about auto-intoxication (accepted as scientific fact for a few decades) has now been exploded. But there is a widespread belief that this tardy habit of body is harmful, and an astrologer is no man to fly in the face of old beliefs. Wizard Marchbanks is of the opinion that constipation of body is a trifle—a mere idiosyncrasy like double-jointedness or being able to wiggle your ears—but he warns against constipation of mind, which is a widespread and neglected illness. Costiveness of body afflicts no one but the person concerned: costiveness of mind afflicts everybody with whom the sufferer comes in contact. If he occupies a high place in the world (and the ailment is a positive recommendation in many professions) he may do more harm than a hundred men of normal mental processes can undo in a lifetime.
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FRANKNESS DEPLORED / There are too many people in the world who think that frankness is an excuse for anything: so long as a man is frank and sincere, say they, he may talk as he likes. They also cling to the stupid and mistaken notion that people like and admire frankness and respond well to it. For instance, I was standing on a street-corner today, when a man in a windbreaker approached me and said: “Lookit, I’m goin’ to give you no bull; I wanta get a coupla beers; will you gimme the money?” I looked deep into his eyes, and in low, thrilling voice I said “No.” … Now if he had given me some bull—some richly-ornamented tale of poverty, of undeserved ill-fortune, of being robbed while on some errand of mercy—anything in fact which would have revealed a spark of imagination in him, I would have given him a small sum, knowing full well that it would be spent on beer. But to ask me, flatly and baldly, for money to buy beer—! Is that the way to appeal to a Welshman, a lover of the spoken word and the gem-encrusted lie? No, no. Let such ruffians beg beer-money from those who admire frankness. Anybody who wants a quarter from me must first produce a quarter’s worth of fascinating bull.
ARS CELARE ARTIS / Chatted with a lady who once saw the Russian Imperial Ballet in the Czar’s own theatre, in 1912. I asked her for a description: “Like being in Heaven,” said she. I asked for more detail: “Oh, just like Heaven!” she replied. I have often observed that people who have had some experience of this kind -have seen Irving, or heard Melba, or Chaliapin—are unable to give any satisfactory account of it. They remember only that they were uplifted; they do not know why or how. Perhaps it is best that this should be so. The aim of great art is to produce this sensation of ravishment, and not to explain its methods or reveal its secrets. The chief dancer on this occasion, the lady said, was the Czar’s “how do you say?—Favorita? What is favorita in English?” “Girl-friend?” suggested another guest. The lady’s face filled with distaste. “Oh no,” said she, “a favorita is much different. More—how do you say it—elegant.” So much for girl-friends.
FOOLISH CONTEMPORANEITY / In a news vendor’s today I noticed a pile of books with bright covers, which proved to be such titles as Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, and Romains’ Jean Christophe. Wondering idly how such long books were crammed into such a small space I picked one up and found that it was marked “abridged for the Modern Reader.” Laughed out loud, and a few people stared at me, as if I were mad. But I was delighted by the shoddy flattery of that word “modern.” It implied that the modern reader was a very busy fellow, who had no time to be bothered with the windy nonsense even of first-rate authors; he had to have everything boiled down for him, so that he could gulp the essence in an evening’s reading. The real fact of the matter is that many modern readers are pin-headed neurotics, who have not the staying power to read a great book at full length. They must have it cut so that they can read all the bits which describe how the heroine went to bed, and with whom, and any murders which may creep into the tale. Beyond that, they can’t understand and don’t care. Modern reader! Pah!
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To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.
Dear Dr. Cataplasm:
I am greatly worried, and I am worried because I am worried, for I read in several magazines with large circulations (which means that they must be good) that worry causes high blood pressure and ulcers, and that high blood pressure and the things which go with it kill more people than any other group of ailments. How can I stop worrying about worrying? If I could do that I could begin on the job of ceasing to worry altogether.
The notion that worry shortens the life-span is a new one to me, for my family are remarkably long-lived, and they are all master-worriers. And after they have passed the age of eighty they raise worry to the virtuoso level, worrying about things which cannot even be understood by less gifted people. But if worry is a shortener of life I must root out this ingrained ancestral habit, or I may drop off my perch at some disgracefully early age.
All the magazine advice to worriers stresses the need of relaxation. Apparently one ought to be as relaxed as possible all the time. Now when I relax completely, I fall down; I have to keep a tiny bit strung-up in order to get my work done, and to retain the respect of my colleagues. The only way for me to achieve complete relaxation is to go to bed in a darkened room. But that makes me fall asleep, and the magazine articles say that too much sleep is worse than too little. I can also relax after eating a very large meal, but over-eating is not only bad for the blood pressure, but a cause of ulcers, as well.
I am doing my best to live a healthy, relaxed, temperate, unworried life, but you doctors are making it very hard for me. In fact, you are worrying me, and you know what worry does.
Yours confusedly and miserably,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Haubergeon Hydra, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Hydra:
I see that Parliament is much concerned about the quality of modern Canadianism. Apparently it is not Canadian enough—there are still big lumps of British Influence and Colonial Inferiority Complex swimming around in it. May I make a suggestion to you as Deputy Assistant Sterilizer of Canadian Patriotism?
We need bigger and better Canadian heroes. We have the raw material, but we must work on it. You know how Canada hates anything raw. We have heroes, but we have not yet blown them up to full heroic stature.
Look at what has been done in the States with Washington, Lincoln, Barbara Frietchie and others. Unpromising material to begin with. Just men and women. But by the use of gas and mirrors they have been given heroic stature. Think what that story about the Cherry Tree has done for Washington! We couldn’t copy it, of course, for in Canada we still admire people who cut down trees, and could not see any particular nobility in admitting such an action. In Canada, a tree is still looked upon as a Big Weed, to be hoiked up or chopped down, or mutilated with impunity. But there are other stories which we could bend to our use, and I submit the following examples for your consideration.
SIR JOHN AND THE SPIDER
One day our Great National Hero, Sir John A. Macdonald, sat disconsolately in his lawyer’s office in Kingston. Try as he might, he could not get the Canadian provinces to confederate. They simply wouldn’t. As he sat, his eyes were attracted by a little spider which was trying to climb up a piece of string (or whatever that stuff is that spiders extrude so unpleasantly from their stomachs). He paid no attention, for spiders were then, as now, part of the standard furnishings of all lawyers’ offices in Canada.
Up the spider climbed, and down it fell. Sir John’s left eyelid twitched. Again the spider tried to climb the string, but again it fell with an arachnidal curse. And a third time it struggled up the string, and immediately set to work to gobble up a juicy fly.
Sir John was now fully awake. “By George!” he cried (referring to George Brown of the Toronto Globe, and thus uttering a terrible Conservative curse) “shall yonder foolish insect put me to shame? I too shall strive, and strive again, until there is a Federal Government in Canada, gobbling up the richest flies the land affords!” And hastily taking a drink of soda water (of which he was inordinately fond) he rushed out and confederated Canada in a twinkling.
Moral: Never sweep your office.
LAURIER AND THE TEAKETTLE
One day Sir Wilfrid Laurier sat by the hearth in his parents’ home, musing and pondering in French (though being completely bilingual, he could just as easily have done it in English). Beside him, on the hob, the kettle bubbled. “Etre, ou non être?” mused Sir Wilfrid; “c’est la question.” (This splendid line was later incorporated into the film of Hamlet, but it lost a great deal in translation). “Blubbety-blub!” mused the kettle, in kettle-language. “Qu’est-ce que c’est que vous avez dit?” asked Sir Wilfrid. “Bloop!” said the kettle.
In that instant Sir Wilfrid conceived the whole theory of the steam-engine, and would have built a railway to the Yukon if the Senate had not vetoed the idea.
Moral: The Senate should be reformed so as to consist entirely of the Cabinet.
LAURA’S JEWELS
The constant companions of the great and good Laura Secord were her cows. Indeed, it was a cow which overheard the American officers planning their wicked attack upon Colonel Fitzgibbon’s troops, and warned Laura. The story that she herself listened at the keyhole is a vicious canard. Being immovably upright, she could not stoop to a keyhole.
One day she was entertaining a purse-proud friend who boasted immoderately of her riches and her articles of personal adornment. “And will you not show me your jewels, Mrs. Secord?” said she.
Smiling enigmatically Laura called her cows to her. She put her arms around each brown neck, drawing the wet noses close to her own. “These are my jewels,” said she, with well-nigh unbearable simplicity.
Moral: The cream of the cream can get along without diamonds, even of the first water.
There you have it Mr. Hydra. Fill our children up with that sort of thing, and in no time their patriotism will have surpassed even our most unreasonable expectations.
Yours for an aggressively Canadian Canada,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.
Honoured Sir:
On behalf of our client, Mr. Richard Dandiprat, we write to ask if it would not be possible to settle your difference with him in some amicable way which does not involve court procedure. Lawsuits among neighbours are to be avoided whenever possible, as we are sure you will agree. We learn to our amazement and chagrin that Mr. Dandiprat has written letters to you in which he virtually confesses that it was he who imprisoned a skunk in your car while you were abroad. This was indiscreet, but Mr. Dandiprat is a man of lovable and open nature and concealment is distasteful to him.
We venture to suggest that if you care to pay some small sum—we suggest $2,500—to Mr. Dandiprat as recompense for all the mental distress which your threatened lawsuit has cost him, the matter can be closed with good will on both sides.
Yours in a spirit of neighbourly forgiveness,
Jasper Raven
(for Raven and Craven, Solicitors).
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To Raven and Craven.
Sirs:
So, you are crawling, are you? Whining for mercy, eh? No, no, gentlemen, I intend to roast your client, Dandiprat, before the fire of enraged public opinion. To your roost, Raven! To your lair, Craven, lest you perish with Dandiprat in the whirlwind of my wrath!
Yours in triumph,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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Honoured, Esteemed—nay, Beloved Sir:
Oh, Mr. Marchbanks, what a bitter tale I have to tell! Last Autumn, with Hallowe’en approaching, we sent two or three of our secretarial staff into the cellar to bring up the base-burner which heats our office in the Winter months. Hallowe’en is, as you know, a festival dear to the hearts of lawyers, and Mr. Jabez Mouseman loves to see the flames flickering behind the little mica windows in the stove when the great day dawns. The girls got the stove into the office, and with some difficulty they set it up, and fitted the stovepipes into the wall. But when it came time to light the fire, ah, then—. You know how impatient the old are, Mr. Marchbanks. My dear father, Mr. Jabez Mouseman, seized what he imagined to be some valueless material from a filing cabinet, and lit the fire. Unlucky fate guided his hand. It was your file, and all the evidence, so carefully piled up, and all the incriminating letters from Dandiprat are gone.
But the law is not without resource, sir. We shall rewrite all the documents, from memory, as soon as possible. We shall even provide facsimiles of the signatures. In the end the evidence will be better than ever. But for a law-term or two we shall be wise to allow the case to drift along without too much activity.
Yours in sorrow,
Mordecai Mouseman
(for Mouseman, Mouseman and Forcemeat).
P.S.: The cost of restoring the evidence will add considerably to your legal expenditures, but Let Right Be Done is the motto of our firm.
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To the Rev. Simon Goaste, B.D.
Dear Pastor Goaste:
In the course of your theological studies, did you ever run across anything which would give you a clue to the exact temperature of Hell? I find that among my friends there is a widespread notion that Hell will be hot. My own conviction is that it will be cold.
Frankly, if I had the management of Hell I should arrange for it to be a place where everybody had to sit on kitchen chairs, in a bad light, at a temperature of about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, reading the Canada Gazette. A few aeons of that would show sinners what was what.
Yours reflectively,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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Dear Mr. Marchbanks:
Could you, offhand, name the most wronged group of men in Canada today? No, of course you couldn’t, but I, as Perpetual President of the Indignant Females (Canadian Division) will name it for you. Policemen!
Almost every word which is applied to the police in everyday life is a term of derision. Take “flatfoot” for instance. It is a patent misnomer. The Indignant Females have taken plaster impressions of the feet of over two thousand Canadian police, and a majority of them have feet which are slightly rounded on the sole; the completely flat foot, shaped like a brick, was found in little more than nine hundred cases. Nor is it true that policemen have unusually big feet; our investigations reveal that postmen have bigger feet, and that policemen compare favourably with bill collectors in this respect.
Yours indignantly,
(Mrs.) Kedijah Scissorbill.
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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.
Dear Pil:
A man I know has been boasting in the public prints recently about the difficulties which he has encountered in opening oysters. I can only conclude that he has never acquired this knack. The way to open an oyster is to insert a chisel, or perhaps a small poker, into the imperceptible cranny at the sharp end of the oyster, and heave. With not much more trouble than would be found in opening the main vault of the Bank of England, the upper shell will stir a little, and it is at this point that your assistants should push heavy wooden wedges (oak, for choice) between the shells. Then blow cigarette smoke into the cracks and the oyster will sneeze, neatly blowing its top. No trick at all, once you are used to it, and in this way half a dozen oysters may be opened in an hour.
Lincoln said that he who cuts his own wood warms himself twice. Marchbanks says that he who opens his own oysters gives himself an appetite.
Did you know, by the way, that the great singer Adelina Patti (1843–1919) loved oysters, and used to sing so exquisitely after eating them that she would cause the most torpid audience to leap to its feet? This ability on her part suggested the name for that elegant confection, the Hoister Patti.
Yours,
Sam.
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Learned Fribble:
I have been reading a good deal of Canadian Poetry lately, and it has disturbed me. But last Sunday I attempted to go for a country walk, and by the time I had reached home again I knew what was wrong with Canadian Poetry.
Canadian poets are not allowed to come into contact with Nature. The great English poets have, in most cases, refreshed themselves continually by spells of country life, or by excursions into the country. Canadian poets cannot do this. I walked about two miles in the country and although I did not count them I estimated that roughly 300 cars passed me in that time. I had no time for Nature; I was perpetually on the jump. So I decided to walk across country. A farmer chased me, and told me not to tramp on his Fall wheat, which I was not doing. However, I left his land and struck into the bush. This was a mistake, for a big dog came and pointed his nose at me, and did his best to look like a bronze dog on a book-end. Soon two men with guns came crashing through the undergrowth, and seemed astonished when they saw me. “Say, what’s that bird doing here?” cried one, and I knew at once that they had mistaken me for a partridge. But as they seemed about to blast my tailfeathers off I had the presence of mind to shout “I’m a game-warden!” and they made off as fast as their legs would carry them. The dog was still pointing, and as stiff as a mackerel, so they snatched it up in one piece and bore it away with them.
That is what Nature means in Canada. Cars, grouchy landowners, people with guns. No wonder our poetry is of nervous, urban, over-bred elegance.
Yours for a less cluttered countryside,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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THE RULING PASSION / I was introduced to a lady this evening who said, “Well, and do you still do any writing on the side?” I simpered and said, “Oh, a little, you know,” for I was so thunderstruck that I could not collect my wits in time to make a proper rejoinder. But I made a speech to her in my head, afterward, which ran thus: “Woman, for almost all of my adult life I have lived by the pen, with some assistance from the typewriter and the printing press. I do not write ‘on the side’ as you insultingly suggest. I write morning, noon and night. When I am not actually engaged in the physical act of writing I am thinking about writing—my own and other people’s. Writing is my business and my pleasure, my cross and my salvation, my joy and my sorrow.” But it would have been foolish to say this aloud. There are many millions of people who think that writing, and painting, and music are things which their practitioners pick up in an idle hour; they have no conception of the demands which these apparently trivial pastimes make upon those who are committed to them. Such people live in a world which is as strange to me as the Mountains of the Moon.
BLUE DANUBE / Concert-going, which most people look upon as pleasure, is part of my work, and it is surprising how one’s pleasure in a concert is dulled when one knows it will be necessary to write something about it.… The singer sang several songs in praise of the gaiety of Vienna. Was Vienna ever really so gay as we are asked to believe? I can find no evidence of it. Sigmund Freud lived in Vienna during its supposedly gayest period, and had a pretty solemn time among the foot-fetichists and undinists on the beautiful Blue Danube. Stefan Zweig in his autobiography tells us that the gay Viennese ate so much whipped cream and almond paste that they were all fat at thirty, and wheezed as they waltzed. The leading romance of the period was the Emperor’s very dull and proper affair with Kathi Schratt. I have even heard it suggested that those parties at Sacher’s were rather quiet. There is plenty of evidence that Vienna in its heyday was about as gay as Calgary, but it was luckier in having a handful of really good song-writers.
POSTURE PROBLEM / I observe with no enthusiasm it is National Posture Week in the USA; thank Heaven this heathen festival is not being observed in Canada. When I was young we were taught that the only proper posture for the boy was that of a sentry at attention—eyes glazed, chest bursting, shoulders under the ears, toes curled and chin digging into the Adam’s apple. Later this position was somewhat relaxed, and it was admitted that it was sometimes permissible to touch the heels to the ground. Recently a scientist who had done a lot of work with monkeys has said that a relaxed posture, leaning forward and ambling like a gorilla, is the best and most natural for man. So confused am I by these changes that I have developed my own posture, which has two phases—standing up and lying down. I cannot sit. I lie in chairs on the back of my neck, allowing gravity to drag my vital organs toward the floor. When I stand, I lose height at the rate of about two inches every hour. In the morning, when I am thoroughly uncoiled, I am six feet tall; if my day involves much standing, I am five feet tall by lunchtime, four feet six inches by dinner, and go to bed a midget. Posture is a word I prefer not to use in connection with myself.
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To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Marchbanks:
I have just finished reading a book by the eminent child-psychologist, Dr. Blutwurst Susskind, in which he makes it clear that what children want more than anything in the world is parental love. It is this desire, he says, which makes children ask questions at inconvenient times, wake their parents up early in the morning, kick them on the shins, and in general behave in a way which thoughtless parents call “making a nuisance of themselves.” Dr. Susskind says that an eager child should never be rebuffed. The parents should say: “I love you dearly, but I haven’t time to attend to you now,” or something of the sort.
Now I have a scheme which I would like you, as an internationally-known lover of children, to assist me in popularizing. It is based upon the old system of Sunday School cards which you will remember: a child got a small card for each visit to S.S.; when it had ten small cards it could exchange them for a large card; when it had ten large cards it could get a Bible. Now my idea is that a parent should have a stock of cards saying: “Love you dearly; busy now,” which it could hand to the child which interrupted at an inconvenient moment. Ten such cards could be exchanged for a large card saying: “Dote upon you madly, go away.” Ten of these large cards could be exchanged for a visit to the circus, a picnic, a soda-guzzle or some similar treat.
The cards, I feel, could most effectively be sold through the Home and School Clubs; the whole scheme could be financed for a beggarly $100,000 and it is for this laughable sum that I confidently turn to you.
Yours with complete confidence,
Minerva Hawser.
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To Miss Minerva Hawser.
Dear Miss Hawser:
How lucky that your letter reached me when it did! I was just about to write to you about a scheme of my own for the improvement of the lot of children, which is a notoriously hard one in our age. It has been my observation that many children suffer real hardship because they want to see all (not just a few) TV programs, but they are of such a restless bodily composition that there are times when they simply have to get up from their seats and run about. This means, of course, that they lose many desirable half-hours of prime viewing-time.
I have devised a small battery TV which any child can wear concealed in its hat; electric wires running down from the hat into the child’s shoes keep the battery constantly charged by the energy which the child generates as it runs, operating a tiny portable set. Thus the child may play and teleview at the same time, without missing a thing.
As it happens I also need $100,000 to launch this scheme, and had decided to turn to you for it. We can both go on with our work, therefore, without even troubling to exchange cheques.
With thanks for your invaluable help,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.
Dear Sam:
I was reading a new book about the eighteenth century a few days ago, and came upon some references to Dr. Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge; the author remarked that however out of temper the great Doctor might be, the appearance of Hodge was enough to put him in a good humour. I send you, therefore, the following poem, which I have called Remarkable Power of a Cat to Soothe a Raging Philosopher:
Dr. Johnson’s cat Hodge
Was up to every feline dodge:
When the Doctor shouted “Sir!”
Hodge would disarmingly interject “Purr.”
Rather good, don’t you think?
Pilgarlic.
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To Chandos Fribble, ESQ.
Learned Fribble:
Yesterday a picture in a magazine for women, called Glamour, was drawn to my attention; it showed a reasonably toothsome young woman wearing spectacles, engaged in reading a large leather-bound book; with one hand she was thoughtfully scratching her head. Underneath the picture was advice, addressed to women in general, to curl up with a good book.
This is an expression which I am at a loss to understand. I read a good many books myself, but I never feel disposed to curl up while doing so. Now and then in the course of my duties as a book-reviewer I read a book which causes me to curl, slightly, but not with pleasure; I uncurl at once and write something nasty about the books. Why are women such curlers, in their literary moods?
I may say, in passing, that I would never dream of lending a book to a woman who was a head-scratcher. Human hair and dandruff are nasty things to find between the pages of a book. I once knew a man who used his pipe as a bookmark. At least women are free from that disgusting trick.
But to return to our curling; have you ever tried to curl up with a book? It brings about cramp; it makes you read sideways, which is bad for the eyes; persisted in, it gives you not only curvature of the spine, but curvature of the brain, and a low literary taste.
You have heard people say of somebody that he has a wrong slant on things. He got it by curling up with the wrong books, and reading them sideways.
Yours, from my armchair,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Waghorn Wittol, ESQ.
My good Wittol:
I am flattered that you should appeal to me so often for advice, but really I cannot suggest any means by which you may regain Mrs. Wittol’s wandering affections. At least, nothing which I think will work.
However, if you are interested in a scheme which probably won’t work, may I suggest that you have recourse to the Language of the Eyes? I was reading about it the other day in a novel by Ouida, an authoress who is unaccountably neglected these days. The passage ran thus: “Olga Brancka looked at him with some malice and more admiration; she was very pretty that night, blazing with diamonds and with her beautifully shaped person as bare as court etiquette would allow; there was a butterfly, big as the great Emperor moth, between her breasts, making their whiteness look like snow. The glance was not lost upon him; in the Language of Eyes it seemed to say, ‘This might be yours.’ ” See—he could have had that moth for the asking.
As it happens, I am one of the few great masters of the Language of Eyes living today. I practise it at my dentist’s. When I lower my lids to half-mast it means “You are brutal.” When I push them out of their sockets like ping-pong balls it means “This is unbearable.” When I cause them to roll around the edges of their sockets, like billiard balls wondering whether or not to fall into the pocket, it means “I am about to faint.” When I cross and uncross them, with an audible clicking, it means “Pain has bereft me of reason.” You say that it is useless to talk to Mrs. Wittol; why don’t you try the Language of Eyes? Ouida and I both recommend it.
Yours in hope (but not high hope),
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Chandos Fribble, ESQ.
Worthy Fribble:
It is indeed good news that you intend to prepare a book on the Rights of Women in Canada. I shall await the appearance of the Fribble Report with keen expectation. Is it true that the French translation is to be called, with greater frankness, L’Amour au Canada?
Meanwhile, let me report for you a curious conversation which I heard the other night, when I attended an entertainment where a great many adolescents were present. Behind me sat a boy and a girl, both about fifteen.
BOY: (Laughing at one of his own jokes) “G’wan, cut out that laffin.” ’
GIRL: “Gee, I can’t. You got me laffin’ so’s I can’t stop.”
BOY: (delighted) “Cut it out, I tell yuh. Everybody’s lookin’ at yuh.”
GIRL: (trying to stifle mirth) “Fsssst! Splut! Eeeeeeeek!”
BOY: (transported) “Cut it out! Cut it out!”
GIRL: “Gee I can’t! Not if you’re gonna say funny things like that!”
BOY: “Juh want me to take yuh out in the hall and slap yuh around? That’ll stopyuh!”
GIRL: (ecstatic at the idea) “Aw, yer killin’ me! Fsssst!”
Here, I think we have a fairly typical pattern of Canadian sexual behaviour. The male, having subdued the female by his superior intellectual power, dominates and even threatens her. This produces in her a mounting physical and psychological pleasure, like the rising of steam in a boiler. This psychological pressure causes her to kick the back of my seat in an irregular rhythm, similar to the mating-dance of the Whooping Crane. It is this sort of thing that makes Canada the Amorist’s paradise it is.
I shall inform you of any other interesting manifestations of the biological urge which may come under my eye.
Scientifically yours,
Marchbanks.
Dear Mr. Fishorn:
No, I will not support your application for a Canada Council grant to enable you to write your novel. I know nothing about you, but I know a good deal about novels, and you are on the wrong track.
You say you want money to be “free of care” for a year, so that you can “create,” and you speak of going to Mexico, to live cheaply and avoid distraction. Fishorn, I fear that your fictional abilities have spilled over from your work into your life. You see yourself in some lovely, unspoiled part of Mexico, where you will stroll out of your study onto the patio after a day’s “creation,” to gaze at the sunset and get into the cheap booze; your wife will admire you extravagantly and marvel that you ever condescended to marry such a workaday person as herself; the villagers will speak of you with awe as El Escritor, and will pump your beautiful servant Ramona for news of your wondrous doings; you will go down into the very depths of Hell in your creative frenzies, but you will emerge, scorched and ennobled, in time for publication, translation into all known languages, and the Nobel Prize.
Ah, Fishorn, would that it were so! But take the advice of an old hand: you won’t write any better in Mexico than in Tin Cup, B.C., and unless you are wafted into a small, specially favoured group of the insane, you will never be free from care. So get to work, toiling in the bank or wherever it is by day, and serving the Triple Goddess at night and on weekends. Art is long, and grants are but yearly, so forget about them. A writer should not take handouts from anybody, even his country.
Benevolently but uncompromisingly,
Samuel Marchbanks.
*
DREAM MADDENS / Saw a motor-bicycle parked in the street today, and on its wind-screen were several alluring pictures of girls, one of whom wore what appeared to be a scanty outfit of leopardskin underwear; she stretched her arms above her head (presumably in order to give greater freedom to her considerable bosom) and carried a banner upon which was written “If you don’t see what you want, ask for it.” As I looked, the owner came out of a house, mounted the machine, kicked it fiercely in the slats several times, and at last goaded it into action. He was a smallish, mousey fellow with rimless glasses, and did not look to me as though his acquaintance included any girls who wore leopard next their skins. And it has been my usual experience that all those wildly improbable girls who exist only in the minds of artists appeal chiefly to young men who either know no girls at all, or know only girls of a mousiness equal to their own. Pin-up girls are dreams, and dreams unlikely to come true. And a good thing, perhaps, for what would the average young man do with a girl who never put on her clothes and whose bosom accounted for one-third of her total weight?
FEATHERED FUTURITY / I see by the paper that Rhythmic Arithmetic has been abandoned in the schools. I never understood what it was, though much time was wasted by adult educators explaining it to me, and I never met a child who could explain it. But I have long recognized that I have no mathematical facility whatever. Plato, who was a brainy fellow, said that “innocent, light-minded men who know no mathematics will become birds after death”; I rather look forward to being a bird, and taking a bird’s revenge on all my enemies. Plato also thought that men who had no philosophy would become animals after death; really stupid people would continue their existence as fish; “cowardly and unrighteous men,” he asserted, would find that in the next world they had been turned into women. Plato had a poor opinion of women, which would make life difficult for him if he were born again in this century; he also thought little of the professional educators of his day, an attitude which would make it utterly impossible for him to get a certificate to teach in a one-room country school in Twentieth Century Canada.
WORD OF HORROR / Was talking to a musical person who informed me that a celebrated pianist would “concertize” in Toronto next month. This remark nearly caused me to swallow my pipe, for though I have seen the vile word “concertize” in print for several years this was the first time I had ever heard anyone use it in conversation. I was taken aback as if my hostess had said, “Won’t you climax your meal with another cup of coffee?” Such words fill me with an urge to seize the person who uses them in a commando grip and twist him (more often the offender is a she) until I have broken every bone. Then their broken-boned walking would be appropriate to their broken-boned speech. O Mighty Music! Did David concertize before Saul, or Bach before Frederick the Great? Did Beethoven concertize? (In the time, of course, when they were not composerizing.) No, apes and dung-beetles, they PLAYED!
SUPER-BOY / To a concert given by a group of choir boys from Vienna. It was an admirable evening’s entertainment, which was more than I had expected for I am not an enthusiastic admirer of the Human Boy. In my reckoning boys range from Good Boys—that is, boys who can pass the Towers without upsetting garbage cans and throwing rubbish on the lawn—to the lowest dregs of humanity, depraved slubberdegullions who do the above things, and worse. But these Viennese boys were quite unusual in several respects; they were clean; they were well-behaved; their hair was brushed; they looked as though they might be trusted with whole rows of garbage cans.… This was the first time I have ever heard choir boys who were not trained in the English tradition of fruity hooting; an English choirboy sounds like a lovesick owl, and although it is a pretty sound it moves me to a gentle melancholy—a kind of Sunday-night-and-another-week’s-work-starts-tomorrow feeling.… Sometimes people say to me: Were you never a boy yourself, Mr. Marchbanks? Answer: Yes, for several years I was a noble, dutiful, clean, respectful Super-Boy.
*
To Big Chief Marchbanks.
How, Marchbanks:
You got any old magazines, Marchbanks? Magazines in jail awful. Sent here after long hard life in dentist office. All girl pictures got bustles. Educated fellow in jail read story out loud other day. Good story about detective. Name Sherlock Holmes. Magazine say this first story about him ever. But last page gone. Doctor leave magazine bundle here yesterday. Magazine all about how have babies. We know that already. Anyway that squaw work. You got magazines tell us what we don’t know?
Osceola Thunderbelly
(Chief of the Crokinoles).
*
Be most alert when most victorious, for though you may not hit your adversary when he is down, it is considered plucky in him to kick you.