Bits and Pieces

by Robert Benchley

  So what we think we had better do is stick around here for a couple of weeks, maybe working up a little story which will make a good picture. I wish now that we had brought Dr. Reeby’s little boy along, because shots of children always go big and we could show him, in close-up, crying because a camel is drinking his milk or perhaps singing “Anchors Aweigh!” (By the way, I hope that these are camels we have here. I haven’t looked closely.)

  The plan now is that we should not go back by way of Paris. We have seen enough of Paris for one expedition, and a lot of us have never been to Hong Kong. If we go back by way of Hong Kong, that ought to land us in New York in perhaps three years (there are no horse-chestnut trees in Hong Kong, I hear), which will make it an even eleven years away from home. Gosh, it will seem good to get back!

  In my next radio, I will tell just what we found out about our discovery. If it should turn out to be merely what it looks like, then I suppose we shall have to stick around until we find something else. But I see no reason why we can’t make it sound good enough to make it worthwhile having sent us out. The picture rights alone ought to be worth plenty.

  Dr. Reeby has just come in and says that our hieroglyphic expert says that the inscription reads: “Deliver no more milk until further notice.” Just think! Five hundred thousand years B.C. people were going away on vacations and leaving notes to milkmen! It hardly seems possible, does it?

  Well, I guess that means that we don’t have to dig any more. So it’s off to Home and Hurrah for Science!

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  A Trip to

  Spirit Land

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  In all the recent talk about spirits and spiritism (by “recent” I mean the past three hundred and fifty years) I have maintained what amounts to a complete silence, chiefly because I have been eating crackers a great deal of the time and couldn’t talk, but also because I saw no reason for my giving away those secrets of spirit communication which have, in my day, made me known from Maine to New Hampshire as “the Goat of Ghosts.” Now, however, I feel that society should know how it has been duped, boop-doopa-duped, in fact.

  I first began my experiments with spiritism in 1909 while sitting in the dark with a young lady who later turned out to be not my wife. Watches with phosphorescent dials had just come into use and I had one of the few in town. In fact, I had one of the few watches in town, most of the residents still sticking to the old-fashioned hourglass as being more handy. I had just moved my watch up to my nose to take a look at it in the dark, as I realized that it was time to go beddie-bye, when the young lady, seeing a phosphorescent blob of light make its way like a comet through the dark at her side, screamed, “There’s a ghost in the room!” and fainted heavily.

  It was some time before I could get out from under her, and even more time before I realized what it was that had given her such a fright; but, once it became clear to me, I knew that I had here the makings of a great little racket. So, stepping across her prostrate body, I went out into the world to become a medium, or, in the technical language of the craft, a medium stout.

  Not many people realize how easy it is to fake spirit manifestations. For example, there was the famous case of one Dr. Rariborou, well known in London during the first decade of the century as a highly successful medium and eye-ear-nose-throat man. He combined his medical practice with his occult powers by making spirits play tambourines in people’s throats while he was working on them. This not only mystified his patients but made them pretty irritable, so he had to give it up in the end and devoted all his time to séances. Dr. Rariborou, or, as he afterward became known, “Dr.” Rariborou, was famous for his “flying leg” trick, or “foot messages.” This was a highly mystifying manifestation, even to Dr. Rariborou, although he knew exactly how it was done. The client was seated in a darkened room, after having examined the medium to make sure that he was securely bound with surgeon’s tape to his assistant, who was, in turn, chained to the wall of the room. The room was then hermetically sealed, so that it got rather unbearable along about four o’clock.

  Having made sure that everything was shipshape (one of those old medieval prison ships you read about – I don’t), the client sat in a chair and held fast on to the knee of Dr. Rariborou. Sometimes they would sit this way for hours, if Dr. Rariborou happened to like the client. Otherwise, the séance would begin immediately with a message to the doctor from his control, an old Indian named Mike. Mike would tell the doctor that someone wanted to talk to the client, usually someone of whom the client had never heard, whereupon a ghostly leg would be seen flying through the air, delivering a smart kick with its foot on the side of the client’s head. Almost simultaneously a kick would be received on the other side of the head, which would pretty well rock the client groggy. His chair would then be pulled out from under him and a pail of water be upset over his shoulders.

  At the same time a spirit mandolin, suspended in mid-air, would play Ethelbert Nevin’s “Narcissus” in double time, with not too expert fingering on the high notes.

  This astounded, and bruised, a number of clients, and the doctor’s reputation grew apace. The funny part of it was that practically every client who was thus maltreated had no difficulty in recalling some deceased friend or relative who might be glad to treat him in this manner. They all took it for granted that they were getting only what was coming to them from someone who was dead. They would say, as they picked themselves up after the séance: “I guess that must have been Dolly,” or, “Sure, I know who that was, all right. It was Joe.” All of which does not speak very well for human society as it is constituted today.

  Now for the explanation of how this “flying leg” trick was done. It was one of my favorites when I was at the zenith of my powers. The medium is strapped, as we saw, by surgeon’s tape, to his assistant, who is in turn chained to the wall. When the lights are put out, the medium using the one knee which is free from the grasp of the client, presses a concealed spring in the chairs on which he is sitting, which releases the entire side of the room to which the assistant is chained.

  The assistant, with nothing to bother him now but the loose wall hanging to his wrists and the medium who is strapped to him, seizes an artificial leg which has been covered with phosphorescent paint and belabors the client with it as we have seen. With one foot he releases a spring which pulls the chair out from under the victim, and with the other foot releases another spring which upsets the pail of water. By this time the client doesn’t know or care much what goes on. Meanwhile the medium, still strapped to the assistant, brings out a mandolin pick which he has had concealed in his cheek and plays a phosphorescent mandolin which has been lowered by a second assistant from the ceiling to a point directly in front of his mouth. “Narcissus” calls for very little fretwork on the mandolin, being played mostly on the open strings, but what little fingering there is to be done is easily handled by the tip of the medium’s nose which he has trained especially for this work. You can do it yourself some time, unless you happen not to like “Narcissus” as a tune. I myself got pretty darned sick of it after five or six years, which was one of the reasons I gave up holding séances.

  Another famous medium, whose fakes are now generally recognized, was Mme. Wayhoo, an East Indian woman from New Bedford, Massachusetts, whose father was one of the old New Bedford whales. Her specialty was spirit writing, and her chief claim to integrity was that she herself could neither read nor write. (As a matter of fact, she was a graduate of Radcliffe, according to the gossips.) The person desirous of getting in touch with deceased relatives would go into a darkened room and ask questions of Mme. Wayhoo, such as, “Is it in this room? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Did you file an income-tax return in 1930 and, if so, were you married or single at that time?”

  To these questions the medium would reply nothing, until the questioner got rather jittery as a result of sitting in a dark room and asking questions into the blackness with no replies. Just a
s some form of mental breakdown was about to take place, the medium would scratch on a slate with a slate pencil, at the revolting sound of which the client would leap into the air and rush from the room screaming. On returning, he or she would find that a message had been written on the slate, something lie “Out to lunch – back at 2:30,” or a complete bowling score. I do not even have to explain how this was done.

  I have in my files hundreds of other explanations of psychic phenomena, but I am saving them up for a debate. I also have some excellent rye whisky which I will let go for practically nothing to the right parties.

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  Around the World

  with the Gypsy Jockey

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  Our movietone globe-trotting this week will take us to far-off Gukla, where the exotic odors of the East mingle with the sound of temple bells and bits of old string to blend into one bewitching symphony, a never-to-be-forgotten idyl in the memory of the traveler from the West. And two dozen of your best eggs.

  As in our former travelogues, we shall be conducted by a man who, because of his romantic wanderings in and out of all the lands of the earth, as well as upstairs in grandma’s house, has become known as “The Gypsy Jockey.” I need hardly introduce to you, therefore. Colonel Michington Mea, “The Gypsy Jockey,” who will conduct you through the movietone to far-off Gukla where (see first paragraph).

  Well, my dear cinema audience, here we are at the ends of the earth, or, at any rate, one end. The first shot shows us paddling up the West Okash River on our way to far-off Gukla, and those little heads and things that you see bobbing up and down in the water are my own little heads and things that I had just discarded after a night of drinking the native punch or Kewa – and I think that you would agree with me that “punch” is just the word for it. Rather a distressing sight, isn’t it? I don’t know which was the more distressing, the heads I discarded or the one I kept on my shoulders. None of them was in the least satisfactory.

  Now we are coming to the bend in the river from which we may see a vista of Gukla, with its toylike pagodas and strange monuments to unknown deities. Truly a wonderful sight, unless by chance, we happen to be looking in quite the wrong direction. Gukla is a city which is many hundreds of years old and is built entirely on bamboo piles about the water. Perhaps you will wonder why, when the town was built, it was not built on dry land along the river bank instead of on poles in the water. The natives themselves often wonder that, too, but it is too late to do anything about it.

  Here we are, landing at Gukla, and you will notice the hundreds of natives who have come down to the landing to watch us. What funny costumes! (I am referring to our costumes and not those of the natives, who, as you will see if you are not skittish about such matters, wear no costumes at all.) That little old man who is waving something at us is an uncle merchant trying to sell us his uncle. There is a great deal of trading in uncles in Gukla, although this particular year the market is unusually small, owing to the unparalleled hoarding on the part of the aunts.

  And now we climb the road from the river bank to the top of an old hill where stands this perfect example of a Gukla temple, built in the Fourth Century After Krinkjka – everything here is dated as before or after Krinjka, the God of Summer Squash – which would make it the third century before the Reign of the Butterfly Cocoon, or about 1896 in our language.

  As you will see, it is a perfect example of 1896 architecture, with French roofs and lace curtains and a cast-iron dog on the lawn. The only flaw in this temple, as a show piece, is that it was built indoors in the contractor’s workshop, with the result that, when it was moved out to its present site, the top had to be tipped slightly to the left in order to get it out through the door. It is still, however, pretty ugly.

  There is a legend about this temple, which I resolved to investigate and, if possible, to photograph for my movietone travelogue. According to the story which the more intoxicated of the natives tell each other, there was once a princess named Mah Patoola who lived there, dedicated to the service of Krinjka. This meant that all the days of her life she had to sit at an upstairs window and look out at the river below, making believe that she expected to see a lover come paddling by in a canoe. This made it very dull for the princess, for she knew as well as anyone else that there was no lover and that it was doubtful if there was even a canoe. For the sake of the legend, however, she had to sit and look sad and every once in a while lean out of the window a little farther and mutter, “Where the hell can he be?”

  Naturally, this got on the princess’ nerves after ten or eleven years and one night she leaned so far out that her feet touched a trellis which ran from her window to the ground and, after three or four minutes of catching her skirt on nails and getting vines tangled around her neck, she was on the river’s bank and off to town.

  She never returned, and it is generally supposed among the natives that she was seized by remorse and came back to the cellar of the temple, where she still roams at night. There is another story, however, which has it that she met a boy from the U.S.S. North Dakota in the town that night and went with him to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she still is living and running a doily shop.

  Determined to find out the truth of one of these legends, I went up to the temple at midnight and climbed down into the cellar. Here you will see me, in the light of a couple of Kliegs we happened to have brought along, stumbling about among the ruins of old sofas and horsehair trunks which had been relegated to the storeroom by the princess’ parents.

  What was that at my right? I stopped short and had the cameras brought up. The sound of a woman sobbing! Fortunately the microphones were in good shape and our soundman said, “O.K.” Gripping my revolver in one hand (for there is nothing more dangerous or treacherous than a sobbing princess), I pushed aside the debris and peered into the darkness from whence the sound came.

  My native runners had all deserted me, for this was sacrilege that I was engaging in, and the penalty for sacrilege was fifteen minutes on the suttee, or funeral pyre. The suttee is usually reserved for widows, but, in the case of any one who had committed a sacrilege, a widow is moved over to make room and the culprit is given his fifteen minutes’ penalty. After that he can get off or stay on, as he likes.

  But I am getting away from my story, and here we are, all set with cameras and sound machines in the cellar of the Temple of Krinjka, with me looking everywhere for a sobbing princess. That is me – or is it I? – over there in the shadows stumbling – no, up again! – falling – no, by George! – by great good luck catching myself on an assistant director – here we go – what do you suppose we are going to find? – is this exciting or isn’t it? – and now we come to the place where the sound is – and find – what is this? – well, of all things! – three of the cutest kittens you ever saw, with the old mother cat as proud as Punch and ready to give battle to anyone who disturbs her young ones in their play. Never mind, Pussy, we aren’t going to hurt you – off with the lights! – cut! And here we are, out again in God’s sunshine, none the worse for our exciting adventure.

  And now we come to the last reel of our little travelogue, just as we are about to take the boats again and drift down the river to – who knows where? The sun is sinking over there behind temple towers and from the river bank comes the tinkle of old peasants grinding their teeth. What a beautiful sight! What a punk picture! The spell of the East!

  Will it ever release us from its thralldom? Who knows? Who cares?

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  Around the World

  Backward

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  What would all you boys and girls here today say if I were to come bursting into the room and cry out: “Huzza, huzza! We’re going around the world! Get out your tippets and your warm undies, for we’re off to Paris, Berlin, Russia, Manchuria, Japan, China, and far-away Tibet”? You would be pretty happy boys and girls, I guess, unless you happen to be t
he kind who like to stick around home.

  And so was I happy, very, very happy, when a motion-picture director named Milestone (the mastermind who directed All Quiet on Western Front Page) came crashing into my little study one day last winter and announced that I had been chosen to accompany him and Douglas Fairbanks on a vagabond spin around the hemispheres in search of material for a travel picture.

  I could hardly believe that such good fortune had really come to poor little me – me what had always drawn my own carriage – but the Cinderella story is ever new and one never can tell what may happen, especially if one doesn’t know. So I dug out several old Russian costumes I had tucked away for just such an emergency, put some drops in my eyes to make them sparkle, and late that afternoon we were off, the Two and a Half Musketeers, for a gay, devil-may-care tour du monde, “the Great Adventure,” as I dubbed it. Life, I thought, must be like this.

  It was not until the first day out on the clipper ship Europa that I realized what I was in for. I had always known Douglas Fairbanks in pictures as a bonny, bounding sort of chap, with a pleasant smile and considerable vitality, riding through the air on horses and carpets; but I had always, in my extreme sophistication, had an idea that most of the difficult feats were made in the studio by means of trick shots and doubles. It had never occurred to me that one man would be crazy enough really to do all those things. It certainly had never occurred to me that he would expect anyone else to do them with him.

  I have never been, even in my palmiest days (now known as the Great Blizzard of 1888), an athlete. I used to stand in front of an open window and breathe deeply – oh, well, pretty deeply – and cheat a little on some bicep flexing, and, when I was very young and offensive, I used to bang a tennis ball up against the side of the house; but, thank God, several years ago I threw my left knee out by walking down a flight of phantom steps, and ever since then I have always been able to say, “My knee, you know!” whenever anyone suggested any exercise more violent than stooping over to pick up the morning paper.