Part 5 (1/1)
Saturday: Visited a friend this evening who had procured a bottle of a very special tonic called Noilly Prat; in the interest of temperance, we experimented to see how in in order to kill the horrid taste After several tries we got the h a s Fary; their wives stood in the general store, gossiping and criticizing the goods; girls walked up and down the street, arremarks It was all rather idyllic and rural, and reminded me of my far-off youth in Skunk's Misery, before I was tarnished by the fetid breath of city life I suppose everybody has these soft-headed spells, when they think it would be fun to live in a small town They pass quickly, of course
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Sunday: Athis evening ”Fresh air cleanses the bloodstreahts of cigar sed his brain ”When you've got pneuen out of a tank; but all day, every day, the precious stuff is everywhere around you, begging to be breathed, and do you breathe it?” He puffed in my face, ferociously ”No, you don't You're a shallow breather, a thorax-man, like millions of others Well, don't say I didn't tell you” I promised that I would never say he didn't tellhome, I breathed as deeply as I could for several blocks It made me dizzy I am a poor creature unworthy of the fresh air which Providence has lavished uponrather a difficult tiratiate hiic tricks, hich he thought that theytask of teaching the children to perforht-of-hand is like teaching a hippopotamus to embroider pillow-slips The result of the whole mad scheme was tears, bad temper, and frustration for FairchildI sympathize with hiician; I would have been quite content if I could have achieved the modest skill of, say, Thurston or Blackstone I laboured before a s, handkerchiefs and billiard balls for weeks, , until one bitter day when I ca short of psycho-analysis and blood transfusions could make a conjuror of me For the same reasons that I cannot carpenter shelves, fix leaky taps or tend a furnace, I was unable to pluck fifty quarters out of the air or pull a rabbit out of a hat
Tuesday: Passed a bank this evening which was being re-es in which the tellers used to be kept If anything marks the decline of belief in private property, it is this Not so long ago, putting a teller into his cage was a soleer locked hier let hie he spoke in a hushed voice, like a man who had sed a boious awe In solish banks he did not even touch the money: he pushed it around with a brass scoop Whenever he was handed a cheque, he held it up to the light, crackled it at his left ear, and sniffed at it before he cashed it And when he was let out of the cage he had to strip before the er, and prove that he had not secreted any doubloons about his person But the modern teller is a carefree soul, able to run all over the bank if he likes, and ready to hobnob with Tom, dick and Harry It is all part of the breakdown of the monetary system
Wednesday: Two different manifestations of the same attitude toomen forced themselves oncouple just as the boy wrenched the girl toward him by the shoulder ”Aw, yuh little nincoave her a shake; she replied with a spirited, but uncultured, reflection on his legitiazine at a luridly coloured advertise dress, was gazing at the shoulder of his feetarian about to bite into an onion; his hands hovered in the air behind her, as though he ht suddenly snatch her, just as the boy in the street had snatched The caption of the picture was ”Potent Essence of Desire to Touch”I shall never understand life, but I suppose the lesson of this is that if young rab you and call you a little nincompoop, you need a perfuirl in the advertiseirl in the street was tousled, and had been barking her shi+ns on rocking-chairs for weeks, I should judge But both of thehts of shoulder- her physician this afternoon”Well, doctor,” she said, breezily, ”I hope you've been keeping well?” He gulped a couple of tiered a little, but his presence of mind did not desert him, for he immediately turned the conversation to a less ticklish subject Of course it is terribly bad for as giving hi hiot ive the impression that they have no fluctuations of health, and are always in the absolute pink of condition Nevertheless, in spite of the bad manners it would show, I should love to put a doctor on the spot about his health ”Let ue,” I should like to say; ”Oh, dear htful condition? Have you been licking the carpet with it? How's the pulse? Good heavens, it feels like a boogie-woogie bass! Take off all your clothes and lie down on this cold leather couch while I hit you all over with this little hammer Aha! makes you jump, does it? That's bad! Let le! This is serious! You're on the skids, doc; better give up eating, drinking, s else you happen to like”But this is idle daydrea
Friday: Did soht fifteen dozen handkerchiefs for female relatives I don't knooive away a car-load of them, but I have never knooman who had a handkerchief on her person at any time when she needed one Older women always keep their handkerchiefs upstairs so that they can send their younger relatives after the women never have handkerchiefs, and when they cry (which they do very frequently during courtshi+p and usually for no good reason) they always borrow a handkerchief from the man in the case When they marry, they appoint their husbands Handkerchief Bearer in Chief for the rest of his life Sometimes they carry boxes of paper handkerchiefs, when they have colds, but never the cloth variety And why are women's handkerchiefs so s as a table-cloth, pinned to her bosoingon the subject of water-drinking ”How lass ofthat it was not a satisfactory answer He allons a day is the minimum -- the bare minimum,” he said, when he could speak ”That would be about two pails,” I said mildly; ”I don't think I could drink thatelse, that is” ”It would flush your system,” he persisted; ”you're probably a mass of crystallization inside Try it tomorrow”Later he phoned ht allons” Poor boob! he reallya health book, and giving all his acquaintances the benefit It is one of the mistakes of democracy that it teaches such people to read
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Sunday: Ru in some of my personal debris today I found two Christot to send out They will be very handy this year if I can find envelopes to fit the for pen nibs, of which I have a large but unsatisfactory store In these days when people write with ballbearings and solid ink, and at the botto, and otherwiseaith a wooden pen which I dip after every eighth word I do this because I like a particular sort of flexible nib which cannot be obtained in any fountain pen that I have ever owned or tried But alas! such nibs are now very hard to find, and in despair I buy every nib I see, hoping to find a substitute for h nibs to open a stationery store, none of which really pleases ress, but I don't care It has pleased God to ainst the Divine Will? (This is the sauist Marchbanks, Bishop of Baffinland, in his lifelong struggle against the heathen abo-paper; he always sprinkled sand on what he had written, to dry it) Monday: I get the strangest stuff in the an ”Dear God --”, but what folloas so confused that I could not make out whether this was a cry from the writer's heart, or a soht an invitation fro me to bestow the benediction of my presence upon its membershi+p The pamphlet by which this invitation was conveyed was beautifully printed and ornamented with finely reproduced illustrations fro, however, was not balanced by the literary quality of the matter printed, which was, for a book club, rather poorly expressed This added to my conviction that As which appeal to their eyes, like pictures, rather than things which appeal to their ears, like pieces of prose In the same way they like fruit which looks delicious, rather than less impressive fruit which really tastes delicious No book clubs for me today, thank you
Tuesday: So some children I know that I aic My skill is not great, but their standards are very low, and usually I irl de estion very laughably, I produced it from the sole of my boot She was impressed, but not completely satisfied ”There's no blood on it,” said sheChildren have disgustingly literal ood deal today about gaaiven a piece of paper and put off in a corner to write the na with ”G,” and there are eaer of the opposite sex and instructed to get free without breaking the strings But between boredoames; the kind I particularly like are those in which one runs all over the house, hiding in the bathtubs and the coalpile, and juame approximates to the plot of a Boris Karloff filaence, charht of such aood hunance; many a beautiful friendshi+p has been ruptured by such shenanigans
Thursday: At last it seeht to expect one frons whatever that anyone has a gift for me, but I aive than to receive (Advt)A oes through with Athlete's Foot; apparently his wife and his daughter suffer from this ail rather distinguished about having Athlete's Foot as badly as he had it; he ranked it with such noble itans I was not iood deal with shepherds and sheep-breeders, and a lot of their sheep suffered from Athlete's Foot, only they called it foot-rot, pronounced ”fut-rot” The sheep got it by standing around in da at one another Futrot was treated with a nasty substance called Stockholht no relief, the sheep was knocked over the head with a club I think I shall suggest to hter try Stockholm Tar for a feeeks, and if they do not improve, the next step is obvious
Friday and Parcelh soive people things which are hard to wrap The adze for h the gold paper which I bought to wrap it, paying an exorbitant fifteen cents a sheet And Fairchild's spokeshave keeps spokeshaving its way through thickness after thickness of tissue; it was a mistake to take it out of the burlap in which it caifts under the Christmas tree unwrapped, for part of the pleasure of Christifts as they tear off the concealing folds Sometimes the objects of my benevolence have been moved to tears; often they are so thunderstruck that they cannot speak The tiave my Aunt Lettice the turtle nicely wrapped and in a jeweller's box, she fainted dead away; if I had just hung the turtle on the tree unwrapped it wouldn't have been the sareat deal of scurrying hither and yon, and lending one's forefinger to people ant to use it in tying knots Having wrapped ifts in the attic, I have to carry them down to the foot of the Christmas tree This is no easy task, and a couple of adzes and some axe-helves slipped out ofcrashes at every step: tried to cover the noise by singing Silent Night, Holy Night lustilyLater joined my relatives for an impromptu Christmas concert, and was moved to tears when my little nephew Gobemouche recited 'Twas Christmas Eve in The Workhouse; later he offered to recite a piece called Eskimo Nell, but was not allowed to do so for some reason which was not one to bed, crept down to the Christht of a candle-end; very few for ht for a wild moment that it was Santa Claus, but it was my brother Fairchild, covered with soot; he too had been peeping and had taken refuge up the chi We retired to the kitchen, and ate pieces of cold plu
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Sunday and Christmas: Hurry-scurry, hamper-scamper, tohu-bohu and brouhaha The happy excited voices of children sounding like the laughter of angels at 8 a of slate pencils or the filing of a tin can at 5 p of tissue paper Everyone lays clains of latter-day squea In some cases, torpor and somnolence have their way; in others, excitement rises to the point of acute Anxiety Neurosis But it is all very happy, with occasional surface irritationsChrist old; in middle life one's capacity for enjoyment is under the constraint of a thousand responsibilities
Monday and Post Day The joy of Christmas has been rather heavily overlaid by the necessity to cope with is they don't really want, and subdue children who have been driven to the utterence of it all Perhaps this is ri the funnies today (just to keep in touch hat the coe which has taken place in what an to read the funnies this subject was sireat professor of humorous dynamics was Bud Fisher, the creator of Mutt and Jeff When Mutt hit Jeff with a spittoon, the noise which came out of Jeff's head was ”Pohich was clearly printed at the appropriate spot; if Mutt threw Jeff out of a , the trajectory of his flight was labelled ”Zowie” Jiggs neverever came out of his head except stars and comets But nowadays this dynaiven a knockout blow his chin e letters; when a man is kicked by a horse or a mule his afflicted part says ”Zok!” Two of the dynale have vanished fro on the floor) and ”Wha struck with a broom There's no doubt about it, science is on thewas co distance call The telephone comatch with the caller's secretary, as determined not to let me speak to him until his full impressiveness and executive splendour had been paraded before me This involved many repetitions of ”Are you ready to speak to Mr Squealy?” ”Just a moment, please,” ”Are you ready at your end, Mr Marchbanks?” ”Hold the line, please, Mr Squealy isn't quite ready yet” This went on for quite a time and was punctuated with sounds like ”Bzzzzt” which I think the secretary caused by blowing a raspberry into the phone All this nonsense begot a somewhat morose attitude in my lory, I was surly with him Secretaries who seek to build up their bosses by such means merely make their Mr Squealies detested by all honestme today about how he had been robbed of his underwear and a package of pork chops while driving his bus Unfortunately a traffic snarl cut him off in the middle of the story, and I did not find out whether he earing the underwear at the time or whether it was in the parcel I have seen a conjuror take off his shi+rt without reht strip a man in the same way I brooded on this problem for some tianist, who once shocked the daylights out of a lady pupil by telling her that he was going to show her how to change her co her feet off the pedalsLater was in a hardware store when a lass; he showed the ht he breathed rather h his nose than alike that I shriek and edians with the Habimah Players, and have to have feathers burned under
Friday: To the theatre tonight and sat behind a man who had hives, or St Vitus' dance, or soo it was my task to read a small child a book by a writer named Enid Blyton, whose work I had not previously known, and whose other books I feel no urge to seek; this one was about a restless, bouncing little creature called the Fairy Bobabout I had never expected to sit behind the Fairy Bobabout in a theatre, but there I was, and there was FB, right ahead I heard people behind , and such scraps of conversation reached e our seats” andthat they too were annoyed with FB I turned and grinned lares and sniffs And then the horrible truth dawned upon ht, I had jumped to the left, and vice versa, to avoid him, and thus, to the people behind me I was no better than he I was BOB-ABOUT This so unnervedI sat crunched up in one arthritic posture, tense with shame
Saturday: The last day of the year, and I passed part of the evening in melancholy reflection upon the waste of tireatest sin If only I could drivebooks for an hour a day, practise on the piano for an hour a day, philosophize and ponder on life for an hour a day, eat less, drink less, sleep less, work harder, eat whole, and overcome my ribald disdain for nice sis, Mean Well -- if only I could do all these things, what a wonderful fellow I should be! This line of thought made me so discontented with myself that I had not the heart to toast the New Year, anda bowl of breakfast food and wondering if suicide ht not be best for me and for my fellow-men Roused myself at last toof the feeling experienced by Gibbon when he completed the Decline and FallTo the reader who has read thus far, Adieu
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