Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

  (1) There will be, if I have anything to say about it, a remedy for overproduction in the marked decrease in the manufacture of greeting cards, shirts that go on over the head, auto busses, gin-and-orange-juice cocktails, war books, washroom boys, seed rolls, tops to toothpaste tubes, art furniture, automatic elevators, paper matches. (I am rather sorry now that I began this list. There are so many things, and they are so difficult to remember.)

  (2) In 1931 I look for a decided betterment in the relation of bond to stock yields. That is, of stock to bond yields. The ratio, as near as I can make it out without my glasses, is 4.7% as compared to 5.76%. (These figures are as of July, 1930, and what a hot month that was! I was at the seashore, and never got out of my bathing suit once, except to go in bathing.) Now this ratio, together with the increase in deflation and the decrease in inflation which must inevitably come about with the unfortunate and unpleasant distribution of gold which exists at the present moment (mentioning no names, but it begins with “F” and is a country noted for its dancing and light wines), will tend to break down the artificial control of commodity prices and possibly restore public confidence to a point where people will dare to go out into the street and perhaps walk one block under police escort.

  (3) Money will be less scarce. By this I do not mean that you and I will have more money, or that it will be any less scarce when you look inside your wallet when the dinner check comes. There seems to be another kind of money that the bank handles. It is “plentiful,” or it is “scarce,” or it is “cheap,” or it is “high.”

  Personally, I have never been able to get hold of any cheap money. If I want five dollars, it always costs me five dollars to get it, or, at any rate, a check for five dollars made out to “Cash” (which may, or may not, be the same thing). I never could figure out whether “cheap” money meant that a five-dollar bill cost only four dollars and sixty cents to buy, or that it was in bad condition, with torn edges and little strings hanging from it so that it looked cheap. At any rate, whatever “cheap” money means to bankers, five dollars is always five dollars to me. And a hundred dollars is a godsend.

  However, in a forecast of this sort, one must always say that money will be less scarce – so here goes: Money will be less scarce.

  (4) Now about wheat. Wheat seems to have a lot to do with world conditions, although with so many people trying to reduce weight, I should think that it would be less important now than it was in 1900. Here again, like the money the banks use, the wheat referred to in the quotations must be another kind of wheat than that which goes into those delicious hot rolls we have at home. (Did you ever try dunking hot rolls in maple sirup? When you get down to the crisp brown part it just doesn’t seem as if you could bear it.) The wheat we hear about in the financial quotations never comes in bundles of less than a million bushels, which, frankly, sounds a little unappetizing. When you get up into figures like that with just plain wheat, you run the risk of just sounding silly.

  In fact, I am not sure that the whole financial and business structure on which our system is founded is not silly, with its billions of bushels and billions of gold bars and nothing to show for it.

  I am working on a plan now whereby we scrap* the whole thing and begin all over again, with a checking account for ten thousand dollars in my name in some good bank. With a head start like that I ought to be able to get my own affairs cleaned up, and with my own affairs cleaned up I am sure that world affairs would look a lot rosier.

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  Indian Fakirs

  Exposed

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  India! What mysteries does the very mention of its name not bring to mind? (Answer: Mysteries of the Deep, Mysteries of the Arctic Wastes, the Lizzie Borden Mystery, and Sweet Mystery of Life.)

  Chief among the mysteries of India reported by returning travelers, aside from that of how the natives keep those little loin cloths up, is the so-called “rope trick,” so called because it is a trick done with a rope. The rope trick is so famous the world over that it would be just a waste of time to report its details here. Follows a complete report of its details:

  The fakir takes a coil of rope from the ground, swings it above his head, and throws one end of it into the air. His assistant then climbs upon his shoulders, seizes the rope, and proceeds to climb up it until he disappears into the sky. On a clear day the trick cannot be done; neither is it very successful if the assistant gets sick at great heights. In the meantime, the audience has been sitting around in a circle about the fakir, murmuring, “Oh!” and “Ah!” with several wise ones muttering, “Mirrors.”

  On the face of it, this is a pretty good trick; at least it sounds better than the one that I do by pulling a card off the bottom of the pack when someone says, “Stop!” But, in reality, the rope trick is nothing but a hoax. Let me explain how it is done.

  Previous to beginning the trick, the fakir has asked his audience to inhale and exhale deeply, occasionally stopping breathing entirely for a space of perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Now, it is a well known physiological fact that an excess of oxygen in the blood removes the carbon dioxide and makes possible temporary hallucinations. It is in such chemical states that a man gives a head waiter five dollars or asks a woman to marry him.

  If he can be made to do these things, it ought to be a cinch to make him think he sees a rope go up in the air. The effect is something the same as that of eight old-fashioned rye cocktails, and is about six dollars less expensive. As with the cocktails, there is always the chance that you will topple over behind the bookcase and be a subject for the emergency wrecking crew. But you are still six dollars to the good and haven’t had to bother with all those pieces of orange and sugar.

  When his audience is in the proper state of oxygen poisoning, so that their eyes are nicely crossed and they are starting to hum “I’se Been Working on the Railroad” in harmony, the fakir throws his rope up. In the meantime, a large cloud of smoke has been sent up from a near-by bonfire which the patients have not noticed (the World’s Fair could be on fire and they wouldn’t notice it) and from the roof of a house in the background, also unnoticed, an accomplice has thrown a lasso to catch the top of the fakir’s rope. It thus is easy for the assistant to climb up from the fakir’s shoulders and disappear into the cloud of smoke on to the roof, where he receives his fifty cents.

  (I say that it is easy. I really don’t see how it is done, even now that I have explained it to you. Furthermore, I don’t see why, if the fakir has got his audience into this state of auto-intoxication, it is necessary to use a rope at all. Why doesn’t he just say, “O-o-o-o, see the big rope!” and then go home, leaving his spectators to fight it out among themselves as they sober up? Oh, well, it’s none of my business. All I am supposed to do is to explain how it is done.)

  Another favorite trick of the Indian fakirs is to charm snakes by playing on some reed instrument until the snake sways in time to the music. In order to do this trick it is first necessary to overcome any aversion you may have to snakes.

  It would never do for a snake charmer to run screaming whenever a snake was brought anywhere near him. This qualification lets out quite a number of people from the profession. However, like the lady in the story (The story: A lady and her husband, married some twenty-five years, were attending a snake-charming performance in a side show. The snake charmer on the platform offered fifty dollars to anyone in the audience who would come up and perform tricks with the prize cobra of the collection. Much to the husband’s terror, his wife volunteered, went up on the platform, and proceeded to win the money by making the huge reptile look silly. When she came back to her seat, he asked her, with some asperity, why, in the twenty-five years of their married life, she had never told him that she was a snake charmer. To which quite natural question the wife replied, equally quite naturally, “You never asked me.”) – like the lady in the story, there may be some among us who have the gift and have not not been using it, chiefly because
we have not known any good tricks. Here is one:

  The cobra is placed in front of the charmer in a sitting position and is confronted with a reed which makes a rather dismal sort of music. The chances are very good that the snake will become so depressed by the wailing that it will refuse to go on with the trick unless the music stops. In this case, you will have got credit for taking the heart out of the reptile, at any rate. In the event that it stays put and shows any interest at all, you must keep swaying back and forth in time to the music as you play. The snake, who has it in mind to strike out at you eventually, will sway back and forth with you, in order to keep in good striking range. This will look as if the snake were keeping time to the music, when all the while it will be you who are keeping time and the snake who is following you.

  Just how the trick ends, I have never found out. I guess you just keep on playing and swaying.

  The “mango-tree miracle” is another which has mystified travelers for many years. This consists of planting a mango seed in full view of the audience and in a few minutes growing a full sized mango tree.

  There is a cloth placed over the spot on the ground from which the mango tree is supposed to grow, and the magician keeps patting the ground around the cloth, with some idea of helping nature along with massage.

  If the magician reaches in under the cloth with every pat, carrying some large object concealed in a paper bag, you may suspect that he is putting in a mango plant under your very eyes and that it is really not growing out of the ground at all. If he doesn’t touch the cloth at all, but just stands back and lets you watch the tree grow, inch by inch, under the covering, then I don’t know what you are going to think.

  I am sure that I can’t help you.

  There are other stunts performed by Indian fakirs which are not exactly tricks, because they are right there before your eyes when you meet the fakir. For example, there is one man who has had his arm tied up straight in the air for so many years that it is all shrunken and rigid and practically of no use as an arm. The nails are very long and he doesn’t seem to care.

  This is apparently on the level, because no one is going to do a trick which takes five or ten years each time to finish.

  In concluding this little summary of Indian mysteries, let me say that I have never been to India, or talked with anyone who has ever seen the tricks done, and that I don’t believe that any of them ever are done.

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  Bunk Banquets

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  A group of bankers and national leaders got together the other night and started a Big Movement for Economy All Down the Line. It was pretty impressive. They said that the first problem before the country today [applause] was the elimination of waste – waste in expenditures, waste in time, and waste in the hearts of his countrymen. [No laughter, but some slight applause from the speaker’s two cousins.]

  And how did these prophets of Economy crying out in the wilderness elect to assemble this momentous conclave? What agency did they pick to get their views before the public? A banquet. A banquet, which is, in itself, the great symbol of American waste today.

  There are certain banquets which it is probably hopeless to try to forestall. Trade conventions, associated college clubs, visiting conventions, all more or less demand a culminating celebration of some sort, and a banquet is the only thing that our national imagination seems capable of devising. But there are banquets which have not even the justification of camaraderie or the brotherhood of selling the same line of goods. These mysterious festivals are usually the result of an enterprise about as spontaneous as the building of the East River Bridge. They are cold-blooded frame-ups, and are, in the language of the after-dinner encomium tosser, “the result of the vision and foresight and business sagacity of one man.”

  This one man is usually someone who has tried several dozen other jobs since the war, each with a certain amount of financial success but each of such a nature as to allow of a more or less temporary employment. This one man then, being nothing if not astute, realizes the fondness of the American public for cheering and the even greater fondness of American public men for being cheered. So he makes himself up a title, such as “The American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts,” buys himself a new dress suit, has letterheads printed, and opens up an office in Room 1175, Hucksters’ Bank Building.

  The next step is the location of a client. He has practically the entire volume of Who’s Who to choose from, for there is at least one man on every page who is just crazy to have a banquet given for him. So, running his finger at random down the first page he opens to, he lights on the name of “Thomas Merkin Wilney, Author,” or “Norman L. Heglit, Theatrical Producer.” Let us say that, the weather being what it is, Mr. Norman L. Heglit seems to be the best bet.

  The next day Mr. Heglit is approached. How would he like to have a big testimonial dinner given by “The American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts”? Without ever having heard of “The American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts” before, Mr. Heglit says, “Fine.” Our entrepreneur thinks that he can fix it, if Mr. Heglit will pay for the printing. Out of the printing appropriation will come the cost of the banquet hall, lighting, dinner, service, bunting, and a slight commission for the entrepreneur for all his trouble. Mr. Heglit does a little calculating on the back of an envelope and decides that it would be worth it.

  So “The American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts” goes back to his office in Room 1175 Hucksters’ Bank Building and dictates the following letter to a list of prominent men and women throughout the land:

  Dear ———

  As you probably know know, the American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts is giving, on the evening of November the sixth, a testimonial dinner to Norman L. Heglit, the eminent theatrical producer, in recognition of his twenty-five years of distinguished service in behalf of American theater. We would esteem it a great favor if you lend your name to the honorary committee in charge of this event. This will involve the expenditure of no time on your part. Etc.

  H. G. Wamsley,

  For the Committee.

  The distinguished ladies and gentlemen who receive this letter have never heard of the “American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts” or of H. G. Wamsley, but they have heard of Norman L. Heglit, and the name of the society sounds all right and what’s the worst that can happen to them? They do not even have to go to the dinner. So enough of them accept the honor to make quite a respectable-looking letterhead.

  On this letterhead Mr. Wamsley writes a selected list of prominent speakers, actors, producers and wits, and signing it again, “For the Committee,” asks them to dinner as the committee’s guests, and will they just say a few words?

  Here again the speakers are rather in the dark, but the names of the committee are impressive, and they have heard of Mr. Heglit and they all like to get up at a banquet table and “say a few words”; so a goodly number of them fall, and the layout is complete.

  All that remains is for Mr. Wamsley to send out the invitations heavy again with the names of the honorary committee and startling with its promised array of notable speakers, all of which is placed at the disposal of the lucky invitee at five dollars a throw.

  And then the miracle happens. Hundreds of otherwise sensible citizens, flattered at receiving an invitation from so distinguished a committee and nervously eager to hear the prominent speech-makers in this line-up, make out a check for five dollars and send it to Mr. Wamsley, treasurer of the American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts. And, on the night of November sixth, they leave comfortable homes and assemble in droves to listen to five or six representatives of the liberal arts lose all track of the time.

  The net result is that Mr. H. G. (“American Academy of Natural and Applied Arts”) Wamsley makes out a fat deposit slip downstairs in the Hucksters’ Bank, Mr. Norman L. Heglit is richer by a large amount of publicity and “good will,” and each of the suckers is out a cool five checker-
berries.

  In the same class of nonfraternal get-togethers are the banquets arranged by the various leagues of one kind or another. On these occasions the thrill comes in sitting at a table with one person whom you knew in school and trying to pick out the celebrities who are advertised as being present.

  “I think that’s Rupert Hughes,” you whisper to your neighbor, and in return for this information he tells you that he thinks that woman in the black dress is Kathleen Norris. It transpires later that the two are George M. Wass, press agent for Forget-Me-Not Films, Inc., and Miss Ida Roily, press agent for the hotel, respectively.

  You cannot blame Mr. H. G. Wamsley for organizing banquets any more than you can blame James J. Hill for organizing that great big railroad that he organized, but all over the country there are people getting up dinners who don’t even get a dime out of it. And they certainly can’t get any fun out of it. And if they don’t get any fun out of it, who does?

  The whole thing is very confusing.

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  Laughter

  and Applause

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  When radio came into general use (I can remember the first electric light, too – or, rather, the first electric light we ever had in our house. It had probably been done somewhere else before), it looked for a while as if broadcasting was going to put a stop to the old-fashioned scarf dance which public speakers had been indulging in under the head of public speaking. When a speaker could face his audience and flash those fiery black eyes or shake those wavy locks and get the business-like sex appeal into play, it didn’t make much difference what his speech consisted of. He could be saying “Hill- dill - come- over - the- hill - or - else- I’ll - catch- you - standing-still” and his audience wouldn’t know the difference. A great many elections were won in this manner.