Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

  It has always been my theory that the collapsible chairs on a day boat are put out by one firm, the founders of which were the Borgias of medieval Italy. In the old sadistic days, the victim was probably put into one of these and tied so that he could not get out. Within two hours’ time the wooden crosspiece on the back would have forced its way into his body just below the shoulder blades, while the two upright knobs at the corners of the seat would have destroyed his thigh bones, thereby making any further torture, such as the Iron Maiden or the thumbscrews, unnecessary. Today, the steamboat company does not go so far as to tie its victims in, but gives them no other place to sit on deck, and the only way in which a comfortable reading posture can be struck is for the passenger to lie sideways across the seat with his left arm abaft the crossbar and his left hip resting on the cloth. The legs are then either stretched out straight or entwined around another chair. Sometimes one can be comfortable for as long as four minutes in this position. The best way is to lie down flat on the deck and let people walk over you.

  This deliberate construction of chairs to make sitting impossible would be understandable if there were any particular portion of the boat, such as a good lunch counter, to which the company wanted to drive its patrons. But the lunch counters on day boats seem to run on the theory that Americans, as a nation, eat too much. Ham, Swiss cheese, and, on the dressier boats, tongue sandwiches constitute the carte du jour for those who, driven from their seats by impending curvature of the spine, rush to the lunch counter. If the boat happens to be plying between points in New England, that “vacation-land of America,” where the business slogan is “The customer is always in the way,” the customer is lucky if the chef in attendance furnishes grudgingly a loaf of bread and a piece of ham for him to make his own sandwiches. And a warm bottle of “tonic” is considered all that any epicure could demand as liquid refreshment.

  All this would not be so bad if, shortly after the boat starts, a delicious aroma of cooking onions and bacon were not wafted up through ventilators, which turns out to be coming from the galley where the crew’s midnight meal is being prepared.

  If the boat happens to be a “night boat” there is a whole new set of experiences in store for the traveler. Boarding at about five or six in the afternoon, he discovers that, owing to the Eastern Star or the Wagumsett having been lying alongside the dock all day in the broiling sun, the staterooms are uninhabitable until the boat has been out a good two hours. Even then he has a choice of putting his bags in or getting in himself. A good way to solve this problem is to take the bags with him into one of the lifeboats and spend the night there. Of course, if there are small children in the party (and there always are) two lifeboats will be needed.

  Children on a night boat seem to be built of hardier stock than children on any other mode of conveyance. They stay awake later, get up earlier, and are heavier on their feet. If, by the use of sedatives, the traveler finally succeeds in getting to sleep himself along about 3 A.M., he is awakened sharp at four by foot races along the deck outside which seem to be participated in by the combined backfields of Notre Dame and the University of Southern California. Two children can give this effect. Two children and one admonitory parent yelling out, “Don’t run so hard, Ethel; you’ll tire yourself all out!” can successfully bring the half-slumbering traveler to an upright position, crashing his head against the upper bunk with sufficient force to make at least one more hour’s unconsciousness possible.

  It is not only the children who get up early on these night boats. There is a certain type of citizen who, when he goes on a trip, “doesn’t want to miss anything.” And so he puts on his clothes at 4:30 A.M. and goes out on deck in the fog. If he would be careful only not to miss anything on the coast line it might not be so bad, but he is also determined not to miss anything in the staterooms, with the result that sleepers who get through the early-morning childish prattle are bound to be awakened by the uncomfortable feeling that they are being watched. Sometimes, if the sleeper is picturesque enough, there will be a whole family looking in at him, with the youngest child asking, “Is that daddy?” There is nothing left to do but get up and shut the window. And, with the window shut, there is nothing left to do but get out into the air. Thus begins a new day.

  Sometime a writer of sea stories will arise who will immortalize this type of travel by water. For it has its heroes and its hardships, to say nothing of its mysteries, and many a good ringing tale could be built around the seamen’s yarns now current among the crews of our day and night excursion boats. I would do it myself, but it would necessitate at least a year’s apprenticeship and right now I do not feel up to that.

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  What of Europe?

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  Having just been brought back from a brief but painful survey of business conditions in Europe (by “Europe” I mean three or four hundred square feet in Paris and another good place in Rome), I am continually being besieged by bankers and manufacturers to tell them how things are faring with our cousins (I always insist that they are not our cousins except distantly through marriage) overseas. “Watchman, tell us of the night!” is the way the bankers and manufacturers phrase it as they accost me. “What of Europe? Will she survive?”

  Rather than go on with these individual conferences in dingy financial establishments, I am putting all my answers down here, where he who reads may run, and the devil may take the hindmost.

  To begin with, my economic survey of Europe notes a startling increase in blondes in Paris. Big blondes. Being a Nordic myself, I am accustomed to blondes; but the blondes with which the Paris market is now being glutted through Scandinavian and German dumping are larger than any that I remember ever having seen before, even among my own people. They run anywhere from five feet eleven to six feet three, with eyes and beam to match.

  This sort of thing can’t go on, you know, and still have civilization keep to its present standards. For not only are these Parisian blondes tall and powerful but they are snooty very, very snooty – and it is as much as a medium-sized man’s life is worth just to carry on a polite conversation with one of them. They seem to have no idea at all of bringing about friendlier relations between Europe and America – an indifference which is, to say the least, unfortunate at this time when Europe needs America so sorely.

  Just why these amazons bother to come out of doors at all is a puzzle, for they don’t seem to be enjoying a minute of it. They might much better be back in the army, knocking down privates and drilling people. On meeting one of them, with one of those little black hats hanging on the side of that blonde coiffure, one’s first instinct is to stand at attention and salute. One’s second instinct is to run. The second instinct is better.

  Now, with this sudden influx of blondes into a market which has hitherto specialized in brunettes, what may we expect the effect to be on the American market? (This is the question that is being asked me, mind you, by American business men. I, personally, don’t care. I have my books and a good pipe, and I am looking around for a dog.) And, in order to answer this question, a little extra research is necessary. This is not so easy to accomplish.

  If, by the use of ether or a good swift crack on the jaw, one can get close enough to these Parisian blondes to note the texture of the goods, one discovers that they are really American in manufacture. In other words, a large percentage of Parisian blondes are platinum, copied after the Jean Harlow model so popular in America last year. The hauteur is also an American model, distinctly Ziegfeld (before bad business made the Ziegfeld girls loosen up and smile a little out of one corner of their mouths), and the only real contribution that Europe has made to the present product is the size.

  I cannot account for the size, for it certainly is not French, unless French girls have really been tall all the time and have just been walking along all crouched over until now. It must be that the Scandinavian countries and Germany are working night and day to turn out something that
will sweep the world markets, although, of course, Germany has no right to do this under the Versailles Treaty. Here is something that should be looked into by an inter-allied commission (if one can be got together which will not immediately start ripping off each other’s neckties).

  Another question which my clients on Wall Street and throughout the rest of the country are asking me is, “What about Italy under Mussolini?” This I cannot answer as comprehensively as I would like, because I do not speak Italian very well. (1 can say “hello” and then “hello” again, in case they didn’t understand me the first time, but aside from that my conversation is carried on by an intelligent twinkling of the eyes and nodding of the head to show that I understand what is being said to me. As I do not understand, I often get into trouble this way.)

  My chief criticism of Italy under Mussolini is that it is too Italian. It is all very well in America for tenors and other participants in a church festival who are supposed to be dressed in Neapolitan costumes to sing “O Sole Mio” and “Santa Lucia,” but you don’t expect real Italians to do it. It is as if real Americans were to go about singing “Yankee Doodle.” “O Sole Mio” and “Santa Lucia” are the only Italian songs that members of a local American pageant know. They have to sing them. But surely there must be some others that Italians know, and you would think that they would want to sing them, if only to be different from the Americans. But no! They sing “O Sole Mio” and “Santa Lucia,” and seem to think they are doing something rather fine.

  Furthermore, there is the question of spaghetti. In New York or San Francisco, when you go to an Italian restaurant, you expect to get spaghetti, because that is supposed to be the big Italian dish. Imagine the shock, on visiting Italy, to find that it is the big Italian dish! I am not averse to spaghetti, mind you, and in New York have been known to do rather marvelous things with it, both with and without my vest. But I am not a spaghetti fiend, and after a week in Italy I was ready to call it quits and taper off into wheat cakes and baked beans. But they won’t let you.

  They are all so proud of the way they (each individual spaghettist) fix the dish, that you must not only eat three platefuls at each meal, but you must smack your lips and raise your fork and say “Wonderful!” at each mouthful, for they are standing right over you and watching with tears in their eyes to see how you are taking it. My enjoyment of the thing was hampered by the fact that I always seemed to get a plate with a self-feeding arrangement in the bottom, whereby no matter how much I ate there was a steady flow up through the table which kept my plate constantly full. I could wind it around my fork or scoop it up in my spoon or shovel it into my mouth like ticker tape by the yard, but it made no impression on the mound before me.

  I would estimate that in sheer yardage alone I consumed enough spaghetti to knit sixty or seventy white sweaters. And always there was the maestro standing by and beaming and asking, “Was good?” I finally had to resort to a little ruse whereby I would fall screaming to the floor as if in an epileptic fit and have myself carried out of the room away from that never-ending flow of pasta.

  I don’t think that I shall visit an Italian restaurant in New York again for ever and ever so long.

  This excess of spaghetti and Italian songs is made much worse by a Mussolini-bred efficiency which causes your various courses at a meal to be rushed in front of you before you have got the order, or the course you are eating, out of your mouth. Just as you begin coping with the noodles, you see the waiter rushing up with the macaroni, and behind him another waiter with the ravioli, and way down in the distance still a third with the cheese and fruit. It rather takes the heart out of one, especially a slow-moving American who likes to dawdle a bit over his food.

  The money question in Europe is naturally the one in which American financiers are most interested. Leaving the silver standard out of it (a process which seems to be taking care of itself pretty well) and eliminating the gold supply as a factor, I would say that the question of money in European countries was just about the same as the question of money in America – a situation which can be summed up in two words: “Not enough.”

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  A History of

  Playing Cards

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  Not many of you little rascals who employ playing cards for your own diversion or for the diversion of your funds know how playing cards were first used. And I venture to say that not many of you care. So here we are, off on a voyage of exploration into the History of the Playing Card, or Where Did All That Money Go Last Week?

  The oldest existing playing cards, aside from those which I keep in the back of my desk for Canfield, are in the Staatliches Museum in Berlin and are Chinese. Don’t ask me how Chinese playing cards got into Berlin. Do I know everything? Suffice it to say that they are a thousand years old, which gives them perhaps twelve or fifteen years on my Canfield pack. My Canfield pack, however, has more thumb marks.

  These thousand-year-old Chinese cards would be practically no good for anyone today who wanted to sit down for a good game of rummy. What corresponds to our ace (I am told there is such a card in our pack – I have never seen one myself except once when drawing to a 5—9 straight) is a handful of scorpions, and the king and queen are not like our kings and queens but more like dragons with beards and headdresses. A gentleman who had been playing bridge with a ginger-ale highball at his elbow for two hours would never get around to bidding if he found one of those kings or queens in his hand. It would undermine his confidence in himself.

  Authorities differ on the point of the invention of playing cards. Some say that it was the Egyptians, some the Arabs, while others maintain that it was part of an old Phoenician torture system by which a victim was handed thirteen cards and made to lay them down, one by one, in the proper sequence being known only to an inquisitor known as the partner. If the cards were not laid down in the sequence prescribed by the inquisitor, the victim was strung up by the thumbs and glared at until he was dead of mortification. I rather incline to this last theory of the origin of the playing card. But that may be because I am bitter.

  There is a theory that playing cards and chess were originally the same game. This might very well be, although I don’t see where the card players would get the chance to sleep that chess players do. A good chess player can tear off anywhere from forty to sixty-five winks a move, if he is clever at it and hides his eyes with his hand, but a card player has at least got to sit up straight and do something. It may not be the thing to do, but he has got to do something.

  I have often wished, as a matter of fact, that bridge plays could be handled in the same way as chess moves, for if I were given time and a good excuse for covering my face, I could do an awful lot better at bridge than I do. If, when my partner led out with a four of clubs, I could cup my hand over my brow and ponder, let us say for two minutes and a half, I might figure out what the hell it was she meant by her lead.

  Whether or not chessmen and playing cards were once all a part of the same big game, the fact remains that a lot of the old playing cards look as if they belonged to some other game than bridge or poker.

  For example, take the card which is shown in Fig. 1 – the one involving the services of what seems to be an old anteater and three nasturtiums. I can’t quite figure out what the game would be which could possibly make it desirable to draw one of these. Perhaps three of such cards as this and two of the kind showing a crane and some lily pads would be as good as a full house – but I doubt it. I can’t imagine thrilling to a draw which resulted in two such cards as shown in Fig. 2, in which a gentleman seems to be slapping down cockroaches. I would much rather see a simple little four spot (if I already held a five, six, seven, and eight) than any number of political cartoons like those in Fig. 3, showing the Duke of Marlborough setting Queen Anne on fire.

  In the old days cards were apparently designed to fill in those intervals in a game during which the player was bored with looking at his partner (I c
an understand that all right) and just wanted to while away the time by looking at pictures.

  Even when they got to putting pictures that one can understand on playing cards – kings, queens, jacks, etc. – it was a long time before they made them look like anything at all. If you will take a look at the queen shown in playing card number 4 you will see that she looks so much like a jack that there is no fun in it. Furthermore, she has a very unpleasant expression on her face and I’ll bet that she sings soprano without being asked. If I were to draw her, together with a jack, ten, nine, and three (as I would, you may be sure), I would discard both her and the three in the wild hope of filling to both ends rather than hold a hand with such an unpleasant-looking girl in it. Anyway, I would probably think that she was a jack and keep the two for a possible five of a kind. (I don’t play poker very well.)

  My theory about the origin of the people shown on playing cards is this—

  Oh, well, if you don’t care, I certainly don’t.

  It has always seemed to me that the king and queen in an ordinary pack were based on real characters in history, a king and a queen who never got along very well together and wanted to separate. If the king saw the queen coming (in my hand, at any rate), he ducked up an alley and said to the jack: “Listen, son, you go that way and I’ll go this, and I’ll meet you when the game is over at Tony’s. Don’t let the old lady get in touch with you. She’ll only make trouble.” So the king goes one way and the jack goes another, and I am stuck with the queen and an eight-four-two, with (in case of bridge) a six spot of some other suit, and others to match.