• OF HIS GIFT FOR REMINISCENCE •
BEFORE DINNER, I observed, everybody seemed to want to talk about the Good Old Days. I am, generally speaking, better at this than anybody else, for I am not bothered by details of chronology, and tend to regard as my own, reminiscences which have been imparted to me by the Ancients of my tribe. Thus I frequently tell people about how I taught Disraeli to play croquet, because my Great Uncle Hengist did so, and I also have a good story about how I sent Sir John A. Macdonald his first brief, though I have a hazy notion that it was my second cousin, Bloodgood Marchbanks, who did it. Thus I embody in myself the whole Marchbanks Tradition, and possess what anthropologists call Racial Memory.
• OF HIS ECONOMICS •
AMAN WROTE to me today who says, “Why has Samuel Marchbanks no economic problem? To me no Canadian is real unless he is engaged in a death-grapple with his bank manager.” This is easy to answer; I have no economic problem because I do not believe in economics. I am an atheist and an infidel in all matters relating to Mammon. I have never had a bank account;1 I keep all my money in a tin box under my bed, and I pay for it in cash. I am rarely tormented by the desire to own anything, and I would exchange the Towers for a tent tomorrow if tents were practical dwellings in Canada. I fight inflation by eating cheaper food, and wearing my clothes past the bounds of hygiene. I have no insurance, and have made no provision for my old age, as I am resolved to become a whining beggar outside church and beverage-room doors when I am past work. All my life I have defied economics and I shall go on doing so. What is the result? I look at the world with the clear, bright eye of a man who has a tin box, and bank managers love me and sometimes give me blotters advertising their establishments.2
• REVENGE •
BEFORE I FELL ASLEEP last night a moth flew up my pyjama sleeve and tickled me excruciatingly. I overlaid the creature and slept on its corpse.
• OF CHARACTER REVEALED IN DEPORTMENT •
ON MY WAY to the dentist this afternoon, I was pursued by an elderly bum, who kept murmuring, “Hey Perfessor, wanna speakcha minute, Perfessor.” Indigents almost always address me as Professor; I observe that men of very upright carriage are usually spoken to by beggars as “Captain,” whereas fellows whose spines are noticeably out of plumb (“Bible-backed” is the phrase in some circles) are called “Professor.” I suppose this is my fate, but I wish that once in a while a beggar would call me “Sport,” or something dashing of that kind, suggesting that he took me for a frequenter of race-courses, an habitual drinker of champagne, and altogether a knowing and dangerous character.
• OF ONE SEEMINGLY RETURNED FROM THE GRAVE •
I WAS IN TORONTO yesterday on business, and almost swooned at lunch when I saw a man at a table some distance away who had been killed, I thought, in the war. It was not possible to rush to him at once and say “Are you a ghost, or merely an Amazing Resemblance?” and so I was kept on pins and needles for an hour. But at last I buttonholed him, and it was indeed my friend. When I told him that I had thought him dead, mourned his loss, and filed him away in my memory, he laughed uproariously. Nothing amuses people under fifty so much as being told that you thought they were dead; after fifty the joke gradually loses its side-splitting character until, in the seventies, it is received with sour looks. Having established my friend’s corporeality we exchanged news, but I could not shake off my doubt at once, and for half an hour or so I expected him to come out with some interesting revelation about the Life Beyond.
• HE CREATES A LEGEND •
THE COMING OF summer has encouraged ants to invade my house, and this morning the bathtub was full of them. I drowned the lot, more in sorrow than in anger, and as they disappeared down the plug-hole, I reflected that I had probably started a Flood legend in the ant world, which in time will be recorded in ant Scripture.
• OF LOST CAUSES AND IMPOSSIBLE LOYALTIES •
I SAT DOWN today to rootle through a pile of mail which has accumulated during the week and which I have not opened, owing to its uninteresting appearance. I take my time about opening letters which look as though they contain unpleasant news, or information I do not want. I discovered in the heap a copy of a magazine called The Celt, published in Britain and devoted to what the publishers presume to be the interests of fanatical Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, Manxmen, Cornishmen and Bretons; large chunks of it are printed in Erse, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton by fellows called Dmurphaidh and Na Dhoaileach, who used to be plain Murphy and Dooley before the Celtic bug bit them. All of these Celts seemed to be uncommonly vexed with the English, and did not hesitate to say that if the English could be got out of the way everything would be dheaochd (jake) with the world. Being possessed of a considerable degree of traditional Celtic wisdom myself, I soon committed The Celt to the flames.
This seems to be my week to receive peculiar periodicals. Another paper called The Jacobite arrived from New Zealand, of all places; it was devoted entirely to that most lost of all lost causes. It boasted that a letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots, had recently sold for £1200, whereas one from Elizabeth had sold for a measly £500—an obvious victory for the Stuart cause. It spoke admiringly of Louis XVI as the man who had given the Americans their independence—an interpretation of history new to me.
• HE IS EARTHBOUND •
I AM BEGINNING to be a little bit touchy about the fact that I have never been up in an airplane. Not so long ago I was among the majority in that respect; now I appear to be one of a timid minority, classed with people who think tomatoes poisonous, or who refuse to use the telephone during thunderstorms. Everybody seems to fly everywhere. The real reason why I do not fly is that I am a coward, and have not even been on a Ferris Wheel for twenty years. But I am getting sick of inventing lies about how I prefer train travel, or motoring, and some day I may be forced into a plane by my fear of losing face.3
AFTER A TRAIN journey at an ungodly hour I presented myself at the palatial offices of the eminent Dr. Aesculapius, and was told to seek him at the hospital. I went there, and asked for him. “Is it about a Growth?” asked the clerk, in a ghoulish whisper. “Heaven forfend!” I replied, and was pushed into a waiting-room, branded as an uninteresting fellow who had no Growth. But my companions in this sink of human misery all looked as though they had Growths, and for an hour and three-quarters I sat among them, wondering if I looked as ghastly to them as they did to me. At last I reached Dr. Aesculapius. “Tut tut,” said he; “they should have kept you at the office, Mr. Marchbanks; you are to be an ambulatory patient.” … And so, later in the day, I engaged the attention of the great man once again, and he said Hum and Aha, and was so much more mysterious than any other doctor that I can readily understand his eminence in his profession. But at last he shoved me into an immense Atomic Frier which he kept in the back of his premises, and as I cringed under its blast I thought of the boys in the Fiery Furnace.
An ambulatory patient, I discover, is a fellow who would be in a hospital if there were room for him, but who is otherwise permitted to amble aimlessly about the streets when the doctor doesn’t want him. The Atomic Frier made me feel thoroughly miserable; I was nauseated when I lay down and faint when I stood up, and so I crept about bent into a right angle, and moaned whenever anyone touched me or offered me food. This response to the treatment was apparently good, and Dr. Aesculapius was pleased with me.
• HE DESCRIBES AN ILLNESS •
YESTERDAY I finished the series of treatments. “You’ve been a good patient, Mr. Marchbanks,” said the nurse as I climbed off the gridiron; “we’ve put 124,000,000 velocipedes through you and you haven’t batted an eyelash.” (She may have said something else, but I think it was velocipedes; these measurements of electricity are very confusing.) I said nothing. When one is praised by nurses it is best not to be too enthusiastic. They may like you so much that they insist on further treatments. I silently cursed the Atomic Frier, into which I have been slid like a roasting fowl for a month, and escaped to the cubby-hole where my clothes had been left. As always in doctors’ dressing rooms, the mirror in this place was hung to suit the needs of women rather than men, and gave me a fine view of my navel. I was on my knees, tying my tie, when the nurse came in again. She thought I was praying, and bent her head reverently. While she was thus occupied I escaped into the blessed light of day, and bought a pound of candied peanuts and ate them all at once, to celebrate my liberty.
My experiences of the past week convince me that the world is full of Intuitive Diagnosticians and Vicarious Undertakers. Every third person I meet seems to know what ails me, and a good many of them have buried me so deep that they take it as a personal affront that I am still walking about. I have made up my mind to outlive all of these vultures, just for spite, and every year I shall defile their graves in some new and outrageous way on Father’s Day. My family history is full of instances of Marchbankses who wouldn’t lie down; they all outlived their physicians by several decades, and in one or two instances their cantankerousness was so powerful that they did not die at all, but were removed from this earth in heavenly chariots. I have every intention of following their example.4
• OF TEMPTATION RESISTED •
ON MY WAY here this evening I saw a girl sitting on the stoop of a house, with a sign hanging over her head saying “Live Bait.” They didn’t catch me with that bait, though. Not pretty enough.
• OF HIS BASIC COSTUME •
I WENT TO a Fashion Show last evening to see what women would be wearing next season. I myself wore an outfit which I expect many men will favour during the coming year. It was a dark, three-piece ensemble with a plunging neckline which reveals, when I lean forward, the pencil-and-pen accessories with which the dainty waistcoat is embellished. Informality is the keynote of the costume, accentuated by the extra fullness at the knees and the high gloss on the bosom of the trousers. With this I wore wool socks, with inserts of contrasting yarns, and conservative shoes of scuffed calf. For outdoor wear I put a topcoat over this ensemble, which presents a pleasing contrast of napped and napless cloth in the same colour, and complete the effect with a hat in the classic Canadian, or pot de chambre style. This is what is called a Basic Costume, suitable for office wear and, by the addition of a clean shirt and handkerchief, suitable also for dinners, dancing, and social engagements.
• OF UNKNOWN MARTYRS •
OFTEN, AS I have conned the pages of a newspaper, I have wondered who those people are who show such engaging frankness about their innermost secrets. There are their photographs, their names and addresses and all the lurid details of the years which they spent in martyrdom to gas, bloating, sour stomach, pains in the back and spots before the eyes, before they discovered the amazing patent medicine which cured them. But the question still remains: Who knows them? They must be real, but are they anybody’s neighbours? … Yes, yes, I realize that it is not a nice thing to mention while eating Scotch broth.
• OF GARBAGE AND OUR CULTURE •
WHEN THE HISTORY of western civilization as evinced in Eastern Ontario is written, a long footnote will have to be devoted to the curious place which the garbage pail holds in our folk habits. A traveller from Mars, dropping suddenly upon this part of the Earth, might assume that we loved these vessels, and were proud of them. Every garbage-day the pails line the streets like sentinels—mute evidence of the amount of food we eat and the quantity of rubbish we throw away; every night, after the collection, they lie scattered in the snow, and at dusk they look like the bodies of soldiers, fallen in battle and frozen in death. Indeed, Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow must have looked rather like one of these Ontario streets.
• OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S LOOKS •
I RECEIVED A LETTER from the U.S. this morning, bearing a stamp with the heads of three women who had been prominent in the fight for Women’s Rights engraved on it. As I lay in bed I reflected upon the uncompromising plainness of all three. Does an enthusiasm for Women’s Rights kill beauty, or are none but plain women interested in the acquisition of Rights? Surely the engraver could have done something for these worthy but wooden-visaged females? An Italian coin which I had palmed off on me on Monday makes even poor Victor Emmanuel look regal—a staggering feat of artistic mendacity. But these crusaders in the cause of Women’s Rights make the familiar picture of Laura Secord look like something spicy from La Vie Parisienne.5
• A MODISH NOTION •
I SEE BY THE PAPER that a Toronto burlesque house offers a striking novelty—a dance of chorus girls who are shackled together in pretty imitation of a chain-gang. If I am not mistaken the first appearance of this delicious new idea was in the The Beggar’s Opera in 1728, which includes a Hornpipe of Prisoners in Chains. Inch by inch Toronto is creeping up on modernity.
• OF THE PURPOSE OF KISSING •
THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT of Health and Welfare is taking a strong stand against kissing, I see. They say it spreads the Cold Germ. Very likely, though I must say I am less impressed by the germ theory than I used to be. But after all, who is so poor in spirit that he would not rather have his inamorata’s head-cold than his perfect health?
• OF POETIC JUSTICE •
ACROSS THE STREET from my window this afternoon a handsome cat, smoke-grey with a rust spot on its back, sat in the sun. As I admired it a small boy of four or five approached, evil in his eye. With calculated malice he aimed a frightful kick at the cat, but overshot his mark and fell on his podex, whereupon he began to weep bitterly. I leaned out of my window and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!” and then (as the Latinity of the child seemed doubtful) “Thus perish all tyrants!”
• OF NUPTIAL MERRIMENT •
I LIKE WEDDINGS. They are supposed to be a feminine taste, though I can’t think why. Women often weep at weddings, whereas my own instinct is to laugh uproariously, and to encourage the bride and groom with merry whoops. The sight of people getting married exhilarates me; I think that they are doing a fine thing, and I admire them for it. If our society had any place for marriage-brokers I would certainly be one. A wedding breakfast is called so, of course, because people are supposed to go to their weddings fasting; a majority of brides, however, are chock full of nationally advertised breakfast food, bran muffins, bacon and eggs, citrus fruit, and coffee when they go to the altar; I have seen a few with crumbs still on their chins.
• OF A MINDER OF OTHERS’ BUSINESS •
I WAS TALKING to a man today who complained that there were no towers on Marchbanks Towers, and that the name was therefore a cheat. I explained to him that although no towers of brick and mortar were to be seen, it possessed several spiritual and incorporeal towers—soaring pinnacles of aspiration and romance, vast fingers of fantasy reaching into the sky. He looked unconvinced, and asked me if the house were insulated? He also suggested that by crowding myself and my family into a space about as big as the Black Hole of Calcutta I could “duplex” the Towers and profit richly by the housing shortage. He even said that by not doing so I was Flying in the Face of Providence. In fact he worked himself up into such a state of mind over what was actually none of his business that I was afraid that he would make himself ill.
• OF WOMEN AND LADIES •
I LAUGHED MERRILY when I read in my morning paper that the Toronto City Council was in a fantod because a magazine writer said that Toronto women were “sleek, ravishing and sexy.” Most of their complaint was incoherent but one councillor mastered his blood pressure for long enough to say that this constituted an attack on the good name of Toronto…. The root of this trouble lies in the belief of the Toronto Council that all female Torontonians are Ladies. A Lady, in Canada, is a dowdy and unappetizing mammal, who is much given to Culture and Good Works, but derives no sinful satisfaction from either; a Lady is without discernible sex, but can reproduce its kind by a system resembling radar; a Lady does not have to be attractive, because it is sufficient in this wicked world to be Good. There is nothing a Lady hates so much as a Woman, and women are occasionally sleek, ravishing and sexy. The idea that women have invaded Toronto would of course be repugnant to the City Council, which distinguishes itself every year or so by banning The Decameron or insisting that male and female authors be kept apart on the shelves of the public libraries, lest an unlicensed pamphlet make its appearance.
• MYOPIA A BOON? •
I LOOKED THROUGH my window into the window opposite this afternoon, and saw what I took to be a woman pouring water out of a jug on a hat; rubbed my purblind eyes, and wiped my spectacles, and found that she was refreshing the water in a vase of asters. Now here is a philosophical problem: Would I have been better off if I had not discovered the truth? Would not the wonder of my first impression have sustained me through a dull and unrewarding day?
• HE FEEDS THE BOOKS WHICH FEED HIM •
THIS MORNING I put leather polish on the bindings of a number of nice old books which I am lucky enough to own. This is a regular yearly rite with me. There are people who would not dream of starving a child who will starve a fine old binding, and think nothing of it. But a child, be it never so stuffed with vitamins, may grow up to be a sorrow and a disgrace to you, whereas a good book will always be a credit and a friend. Let the admirers of the younger generation chew on that one!
• THE PLEASURES OF SILENCE •
I READ A LIST of the most popular songs of the year this morning. I have never heard any of them. Can it be that I live in an ivory tower? The last popular tune that I was able to recognize was I Duwanna Walk Without You, Baby which was played over and over again by the jukebox of a restaurant in which I sometimes ate. Now, when I think of it, the smell of stale fried potatoes comes back to me with disgusting clarity. I am probably one of the few men left on this continent who really likes silence. I am thinking of getting ear-plugs, like Herbert Spencer, and uncorking myself only when I am sure that I want to hear what is going on in the outside world.
• OF POLITICAL ORATORY •
THE AVERAGE politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine-shaft—blind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a sub-ordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive. There is a popular superstition that a politician who hangs himself in his own parentheses is likely to be an honest fellow, uncorrupted by schooling. Personally I like my politicians to be literate…. No, madam, to be quite frank, I did not know that your husband was an M.P…. Very well, if you wish it, I shall talk to someone else; I do not believe in wasting good talk on people who are plainly unable to appreciate it.
• OF CHILDREN’S PRETTY WAYS •
I DROPPED IN at a child’s birthday party for a few minutes on my way here, and a tot who had been eating chocolates sat on my lap and amused herself by blowing up a red balloon and letting it disembarrass itself of its wind right in my face. The mingled stench of chocolate and cheap rubber was too much for me, and I fled.
• ABSTINENCE AND COLLYWOBBLES •
A FRIEND DROPPED IN to see me the other evening, and I asked him to have a glass of beer. “No, thank you,” said he; “I’ve got indigestion, and I don’t think I ought to throw any Alcohol down on top of it.” Ignoring the coarseness with which he had phrased his refusal, I said, politely: “Would you very much mind not referring to honest drink as ‘Alcohol’? The alcoholic content of beer is very small. You don’t call bread Starch, do you?” “It’s all Alcohol to a man with indigestion,” he replied. This I suppose is a great truth, and throws new light on total abstinence movements.
• OF GETTING A JOB •
DURING THE PAST few weeks I have had chats with several young men and women who think that they would like to get into the trade of which I am a humble practitioner. What amazes me about them all is their frankness. “I’d like to get some practice in a little joint like yours before trying for a job in the Big City,” they say, or words to that effect. As they all come to me without previous experience, this gives me somewhat the feeling of a professor in a kindergarten, whose job it is to set the feet of beginners upon the upward path, soon to be left behind and patronized by my former pupils. And yet they do not want to work for beginner’s pay, nor do they seem to sense the painful fact that for six months or so they will be more of a hindrance than a help. I hope that I may be forgiven in Heaven for the bittersweet answers which I return to their demands. It seems odd to me that in our present educational system, in which virtually everything else is taught or half-taught, nobody teaches these young hopefuls how to behave when looking for a job. I do not ask for grovelling humility, but some hint of modesty, and some offer of honest service, would be welcome. Does any man like to be told that he is a given point which beginners in his trade soon hope to pass?6
• OF GREETING CARDS •
IT IS ST. VALENTINE’S DAY, and I received only one card, which was distinctly rude in its message. But even at that I was better off than a young lady I met who had not had even an insulting Valentine. The Valentine business has been driven just about as far as it can go by the greeting-card people, who neither slumber nor sleep. It seems to me that there is a card for every occasion that anyone could dream of which has any connotation of rejoicing. The obvious thing now is to devise cards for times of sorrow: “Sorry to Hear You’ve Lost Your Job”; “Hoping You’ll Be Out of Jail Soon”; “Sympathy in Your Period of Receivership”; “Thinking of You During Your Disgrace”; “Bon Voyage, and Best Wishes for Your Deportation.” It ought to be possible to work up a brisk trade in these.
• A NATIONAL DUTY •
READING AT MEALS is a vice to which I am a slave, and today at luncheon I was taking in the contents of the New Yorker along with a large plate of chopped cabbage, apples and nuts when I came upon an advertisement in brilliant colour, inserted by the Canadian Government Travel Bureau in order to lure tourists to our fair land. The attractions of Canada, according to this representation, comprise Mounties, totem poles, moose, Scotchmen (with bagpipes), Indians, rabbits, squirrels, deer, bears, sweet old ladies with spinning wheels, and goats with curly horns. This is the sort of thing which makes a Canadian like myself conscious of his lack of picturesque charm; I am useless as tourist bait, and to that extent I am a Bad Citizen. I suppose I could learn to work a spinning wheel, and in a heavy veil I might pose as an old lady if no tourists stopped to investigate me too searchingly. Lots of my friends could pass as totem poles of inferior workmanship. If thousands of Americans come up here expecting gaudy wonders, the least we can do is abet our Government in its pious fraud.
• OF AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK •
SOMEBODY WAS hounding me to talk to a women’s club this afternoon. “Don’t prepare anything; just tell them a few jokes,” he said. Anybody who has tried to tell jokes to a horde of women, all wearing their best hats and expecting a cup of club tea, knows how stupid such advice is. “I can’t,” I replied: “my doctor says I’m dying by inches.” … This is literally true. I die at the rate of about an inch a year, and the process began about a year ago. As there are only about seventy-two inches of me longitudinally and even fewer latitudinally it will be seen that I haven’t long to last, and I must save myself as much as I can.
• OF THE COST OF FOOLS •
I PICKED UP a magazine this afternoon—one of those glossy eager magazines which give their impressionable readers the exciting illusion that they are really thinking—and read an article which said that it costs a family with an income of $5,000 a year the sum of $12,750 to raise a child to the age of eighteen. This seems an inflated price for most of the adults I know, many of whom would be extravagantly capitalized at $50. Still, it is a lamentable truth that a fathead or a mischiefmaker eats just as much, wears out as many clothes, and takes just as much room in a bus or a train as a Socrates or a Leonardo da Vinci.7
• OF UNNATURAL AFFECTION •
THE SCHOOLS reopened today and troops of children in unwontedly clean clothes rushed past my gate, all agog to resume their studies. I met one little girl who was crying because she had a cold and could not begin her kindergarten class for a few days. I eavesdropped as some of the groups rushed by, and found that they were assessing the relative crabbiness of their teachers. What has come over the children of today, I wonder? In my childhood nobody liked school, and with excellent reason. What makes the modern school so attractive? Does the Minister of Education cause a powerful love philtre to be put in the drinking fountains? Stranger things have happened.
• OF ENCOURAGING THE GROWTH OF HAIR •
AS THE WEATHER grows warmer I see more and more men going without hats. For my part, I do not feel comfortable without a hat on, and much as I detest the felt chamberpots which are sold nowadays as suitable gentleman’s headgear, I always wear one. The people for whom I really feel sorry are the bald men who go without hats in the hope that the sun will bring out a few spears of human hair on their naked noggins; it is my belief that the sun is an enemy of hair, and that if you have a tendency to be bald, the sun will encourage it. Consider this matter scientifically. Scotchmen have hairy knees, for although they wear no kneeclouts their climate is cold, damp and sunless. But African savages do not have hairy knees, because they get too much sun on their knees for the hair to flourish. If bald men really want hair, they should wear hats filled with damp and slimy moss; this would cause hair to grow as a form of protection.
• OF CHIVALRY SCORNED •
I TOOK A LADY’S ARM as she was stepping off a curb this afternoon, and she snatched it from me with a great show of offence. But I was raised in the Old School, and I automatically grab at any woman who is changing her level, to prevent her from tumbling down or wrenching her ankle. I cannot rid myself of a traditional belief that women are delicate creatures, though reason and observation assure me that most of them are as tough as old boots.
1 Pernickety readers may complain that earlier Marchbanks referred to his bank account. When I used to point this out to him he would wrap his overcoat about him in the manner of a toga, and declare (quoting Walt Whitman):
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
2 Readers will immediately divine that this was written before the advent of the credit card. After this invention grasped commerce in its clutch, Marchbanks found that unless he had one he was without Fiscal Credibility; if he had no debts he did not exist. Modern man is a debtor, or he is nothing, and money becomes more and more illusory. Marchbanks’ ancestors dealt in gold; he finds it hard to accept plastic (nastily printed in tasteless typography) as a substitute.
3 Totally false: Marchbanks did fly on several occasions until he was barred from the airways by all companies. He was rude to air hostesses, for he had been led by advertisements to believe that they were winners of beauty and talent contests, luscious morsels of dewy femininity. But what was mistaken far insolence was simply pity. When he beheld the workworn, middle-aged slaves who toiled up and down the plane on aching feet—literally walking from Toronto to London—he was so moved that on one occasion he burst into song:
Och, I love the dear silver
That twines in her hair,
And the brow that’s all furrowed
And wrinkled with care:
I love the dear fingers
So toil-worn for me—
Oh, God bless you, Air Hostess
On B.O.A.C.!
As if this were not enough, he applied a quotation from Anthony and Cleopatra—
“… thou didst drink the stale of horses
and the gilded puddle which beasts
would cough at …”
to his complimentary quarter bottle of white wine, offered with his rubber chicken, in a manner that was taken as injurious. If he does not fly, he has no one to blame but himself.
4 Marchbanks had been diagnosed, by several physicians of unimpeachable veracity, as having Something Very Dreadful, yet he outlived whatever it was, and even the horrors of the Atomic Frier. His doctors regard him now as a nasty, contradicting fellow, who doesn’t know enough to let a good diagnosis alone. His lifelong disease, in the opinion of his present Editor, is Inveterate Hyperbole, for which there is no cure.
5 The picture of Mrs. Secord referred to is no longer familiar, having been replaced on the famous chocolate box by a portrait of her in her girlhood, from the brush of the Canadian painter and fantasist, Mr. Clair Stewart. The earlier picture, from a daguerreotype, showed her in a bombazine gown and a starched widow’s cap, and it appeared to have been taken after some serious personal bereavement. Mr. Stewart’s portrait, which he declares appeared to him in a vision, shows her as looking as though a maple-cream soft centre would not melt in her rosebud mouth.
6 Persons seeking to enter the profession of journalism are usually sodden with romantic notions about it, and particularly about the big rewards it brings. Marchbanks’ Journalistic Training Course was simple: “(a) Read all of the Bible, or at least three-quarters of it, because it is a classical education, a history, and a compendium of ancient wisdom; (b) read the Book of Common Prayer, as a lesson in style, and also of good manners toward your superiors (a grave lack among journalists as a class); (c) read the Complete Works of Shakespeare, for knowledge of human nature and vocabulary; (d) read Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe until you have mastered his ability to make dubious, and even imaginary things seem true. Do not bleat about ‘the public’s right to know’ when you really mean your own right to snoop. But snoop, all the same, and keep your trap shut about your sources or they will turn on you and destroy you.”
7 As the average income of a Canadian—not, of course, such favoured groups as doctors, dentists, plumbers and architects—is now about $25,000 it will be seen that the cost of the child in question has risen to $63,750. Roll on, birth control!