Stephen Leacock

“ So that night Itch and Yump stayed in the house of Madame Vasselitch.
"You are tired," said Itch. "You must sleep."
"I am not tired," said Yump. "It is only that my head aches and my face burns from the wind and the sun."
"I will go forth," said Itch, "and find a fisski, or drug-store, and get something for your face."
"Stay where you are," said Yump. And Itch stayed.
Meantime Serge had gone upstairs with the fish and the duck and the cheese and the pudding. As he went up he thought. "It is selfish to eat alone. I will give part of the fish to the others." ”

“ HIS HOSTESS AT DINNER
On what principle that woman makes up her dinner parties is more than human brain can devise. Mind you, I like going out to dinner. To my mind it's the very best form of social entertainment. But I like to find myself among people that can talk, not among a pack of numbskulls. What I like is good general conversation, about things worth talking about. But among a crowd of idiots like that what can you expect? You'd think that even society people would be interested, or pretend to be, in real things. ”

“ In the first place I find that the rich suffer perpetually from money troubles. The poor sit snugly at home while sterling exchange falls ten points in a day. Do they care? Not a bit. An adverse balance of trade washes over the nation like a flood. Who have to mop it up? The rich. Call money rushes up to a hundred per cent, and the poor can still sit and laugh at a ten cent moving picture show and forget it.
But the rich are troubled by money all the time.
I know a man, for example—his name is Spugg—whose private bank account was overdrawn last month twenty thousand dollars. ”

“ The open road again—the first motor flying along! Hullo, what's wrong? It's slackened, it stops—hoorah! it's broken down—there's Madeline inside—there's Edward the Roo! Say! isn't he pale and desperate!
Hoorah! the police! the police! all ten of them in their big car—see them jumping out—see them pile into the thugs! Down with them! paste their heads off! Shoot them! Kill them! isn't it great—isn't it educative—that's the Roo—Edward—with John at his throat! Choke him, John! Throttle him! Hullo, it's changed—they're in the big motor—that's the Roo with the handcuffs on him. ”

“ The Russian view of life is melancholy and fatalistic. It is dark with the gloom of the great forests of the Volga, and saddened with the infinite silence of the Siberian plain. Hence the Russian speech, like the Russian thought, is direct, terse and almost crude in its elemental power. All this appears in Serge the Superman. It is the directest, tersest, crudest thing we have ever seen. We showed the manuscript to a friend of ours, a critic, a man who has a greater Command of the language of criticism than perhaps any two men in New York to-day. ”

“ Flick, flick! what's this?
"NO, JOHN, I CANNOT MARRY YOU. I MUST DEVOTE MY LIFE TO MY MUSIC."
Who says that? What music? Here, stop—
It's all gone. What's this new place? Flick, flick, looks like a street. Say! see the street car coming along—well! say! isn't that great? A street car! And here's Madeline! How on earth did she get back from the old farm all in a second? Got her street things on—that must be music under her arm—I wonder where—hullo—who's this man in a silk hat and swell coat? Gee! he's well dressed. See him roll his eyes at Madeline! ”

“ The war was not made, as we understood, Toomuch, as an attempt to seize my person. All they wanted was Constantinople. Not me at all!"
"Powerful Allah!" murmured Toomuch. "Why was it not so said?"
"For me," said the Sultan, still consulting the letter, "great honours are prepared! I am to leave Constantinople —that is the sole condition. It shall then belong to whoever can get it. Nothing could be fairer. It always has. I am to have a safe conduct—is it not noble?—to the United States. ”

“ To these two humble and obsequious guests no attention whatever was paid, though it was understood, by those who knew, that their names were The General Public and the Man on the Street.
"A sad spectacle," said the Negro President, and he sighed as he spoke. "One wonders if our civilisation, if our moral standards themselves, are slipping from us." Then half in reverie, or as if overcome by the melancholy of his own thought, he lifted a spoon from the table and slid it gently into the bosom of his faded uniform. ”

“ Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself: the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of to-day that fade into nothingness to-morrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood. ”

“ But to my mind the idea of trying to throw people into fits of laughter at a dinner-table is simply execrable taste. I cannot see the sense of people shrieking with laughter at dinner. I have, I suppose, a better sense of humour than most people. But to my mind a humourous story should be told quietly and slowly in a way to bring out the point of the humour and to make it quite clear by preparing for it with proper explanations. But with people like that I find I no sooner get well started with a story than some fool or other breaks in. ”

“ You can lick 'em yet! Hurrah for the United States. Look, Raymon, look! They've shot down the crew of the machine guns. See, see, the Mexicans are turning to run. At 'em, boys! They're waving the American flag! There it is in all the thick of the smoke! Hark! There's the bugle call to mount again! They're going to charge again! Here they come!"
As the American cavalry came tearing forward, the Mexicans leaped from their places with gestures of mingled rage and terror as if about to break and run. ”

“ The canal is solid land again, and the fleet is high and dry. The ships are boarded over and painted to look like German inns and breweries. Prinz Adelbert is disguised as a brewer, Admiral von Tirpitz is made up as a head waiter, Prince Heinrich is a bar tender, the sailors are dressed up as chambermaids. And some day when Jellicoe and his men are coaxed ashore, they will drop in to drink a glass of beer, and then—pouf! we will explode them all with a single torpedo! Such is the naval strategy of our scientists! Are we not a nation of sailors? ”

“ The mere "facts" of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or incongruity in the denouement of it that no narrator, however clumsy, can altogether fumble it.
Take, for example, this well-known instance—a story which, in one form or other, everybody has heard.
"George Grossmith, the famous comedian, was once badly run down and went to consult a doctor. ”

“ I had a most amusing experience the other day—that is, about fifteen years ago—at a summer hotel in the Adirondacks, that one would think would have amused even a shallow lot of people like those, but I had no sooner started to tell it—or had hardly done more than to describe the Adirondacks in a general way—than, first thing I know, my hostess, stupid woman, had risen and all the ladies were trooping out.
As to getting in a word edgeways with the men over the cigars—perfectly impossible! They're worse than the women. ”

“ Here the hills rose again and the road that we followed wound sharply round a turn into a deep gorge, bordered with rocks and sage brush. We had no sooner turned the curve of the road than we came upon a scene of great activity. Men in Mexican costume were running to and fro apparently arranging a sort of barricade at the side of the road. Others seemed to be climbing the rocks on the further side of the gorge, as if seeking points of advantage. I noticed that all were armed with rifles and machetes and presented a formidable appearance. Of Villa himself I could see nothing. ”

“ And it is to this hotel that The Woman's Husband is following her.
But The Man does not know that she is in the hotel, nor that she has left her husband; it is only accident that brings them together. And it is only by accident that he has come into her room, at night, and stands there—rooted to the threshold. Now as a matter of fact, in real life, there is nothing at all in the simple fact of walking into the wrong room of an hotel by accident. ”

“ To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of the old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin. It ought not to be funny to see a man, especially a fat and pompous man, slip suddenly on a banana skin. ”

“ It is a burden that one must carry. Wealth, if one has enough of it, becomes a form of social service. One regards it as a means of doing good to the world, of helping to brighten the lives of others—in a word, a solemn trust. Spugg has often talked with me so long and so late on this topic—the duty of brightening the lives of others—that the waiter who held blue flames for his cigarettes fell asleep against a door post, and the chauffeur outside froze to the seat of his motor. ”

“ Time, as We Men are only too apt to forget, is everything, and since our aim is now a pound of split peas we must, as we sally forth, think of a pound of split peas and only a pound. A cheery salutation may be exchanged with other morning shoppers as we pass along, but only exchanged. Split peas being for the moment our prime business, we must, as rapidly and unobtrusively as possible, visit those shops and only those shops where split peas are to be had.
Having found the split peas, our housekeeper's next task is to pay for them. ”

“ We don't own it. I imagine Roosevelt must have overlooked it. An American has been in trouble there: was refused a drink after closing time and burnt down saloon. Is now in jail. Shall send at once our latest battleship—the Woodrow—new design, both ends alike, escorted by double-ended coal barges the Wilson, the President, the Professor and the Thinker. Shall take firm stand on American rights. Piccolo Domingo must either surrender the American alive, or give him to us dead. ”

“ Lawd a massy! it's just like a real civilised country, all right, now. Down in our island we coloured people is feeling just as bad as youse did when all them poor white folks was murdered on the Lusitania!"
But the Negro President had no sooner used the words "Murdered on the Lusitania," than a chorus of dissent and disapproval broke out all down the table.
"My dear sir, my dear sir," protested Mr. Bryan, "pray moderate your language a little, if you please. Murdered? Oh, dear, dear me, how can we hope to advance the cause of peace if you insist on using such terms?" ”

“ About me was the great plain rolling away to the Sierras in the background. The railroad track traversed it in a thin line. There were no trees—only here and there a clump of cactus or chaparral, a tuft of dog-grass or a few patches of dogwood. At intervals in the distance one could see a hacienda standing in majestic solitude in a cup of the hills. In the blue sky floated little banderillos of white cloud, while a graceful hidalgo appeared poised on a crag on one leg with folded wings, or floated lazily in the sky on one wing with folded legs. ”

“ You've no idea how amenable people are, especially poor people, struggling people, those with ties and responsibilities, to the grip of money. I went the other day to a man I know, the head of a bank, where I keep a little money—just a fraction of what I make, gentlemen, a mere nothing to me but everything to this man because he is still not rich and is only fighting his way up. ”

“ My companion descended, and with a little bar that he took from beneath the car unloosed a few of the rails of the light track and laid them beside the road.
"It is our custom," he explained, as he climbed on board again. "We Mexicans, when we move to and fro, always tear up the track behind us. But what was I saying? Ah, yes—destruction, desolation, alas, our Mexico!"
He looked sadly up at the sky.
"You speak," I said, "like a patriot. May I ask your name?"
"My name is Raymon," he answered, with a bow, "Raymon Domenico y Miraflores de las Gracias." ”

“ I had hardly started to talk about the rate of exchange on the German mark in relation to the fall of sterling bills—a thing that you would think a whole table full of people would be glad to listen to—when first thing I knew the whole lot of them had ceased paying any attention and were listening to an insufferable ass of an Englishman—I forget his name. You'd hardly suppose that just because a man has been in Flanders and has his arm in a sling and has to have his food cut up by the butler, that's any reason for having a whole table full of people listening to him. ”