20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or David Copperfield

by Robert Benchley

  SCENE 7. On Board Revenue Cutter “Delight.” (Semi-close up.) Background of Knots and Whistles.

  The REVENUE OFFICER leads ROB and MARY across the deck and sends for the commander. While they are waiting, ROB empties his pocket-flask behind him into a pail of water. The SHIP’S GOAT comes up, drinks the water and becomes intoxicated, rushing madly toward the hatchway just as the commander is coming up, causing a nasty spill.

  ROB and MARY wait with terror-stricken countenances. Commander turns and faces them and is discovered to be THURLOW CRUSOE, Rob’s father, who has been an under-cover man for the Government all the time. He seems delighted to see the young people and gives them his blessing. ROB and MARY embrace and one of the sailors runs a flag up at the masthead. Union Jack upside down, signifying “We need assistance!” (Fade out.)

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  On the Air

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  What with General Motors, Palmolive Soap, and all the other commercial products going into the radio-broadcasting business and giving out high-class musical and literary numbers, it may soon be so that Mr. Toscanini will have to don a yellow slicker and carry a fish for Cod Liver Oil if he wants to get a hearing. This commercialization is killing us artists.

  It almost killed Grandpa, the author of this essay, the other night, when, for General Motors, he prostituted his art and stepped in front of a microphone to talk precious words and literary nuggets out into the air for millions of unappreciative citizens to hear – and to shut off on. Grandpa isn’t used to having such a big audience and it made him a little jittery.

  The worst part about a radio audience is that it is so cold. You stand up in front of that pole and pull some of your best stuff right into it – and what do you get? Not even Magnolia. You get a stony silence that hasn’t been equaled since they asked for a rising vote of thanks to Tad Jones at a Harvard Club dinner.

  The old boy who tried to neck one of the lions in front of the New York Public Library was up against a hot-blooded proposition compared to Grandpa Benchley when he tried to make a radio audience laugh. It is one of the most discouraging experiences I have ever had, not forgetting the time when I winked at the Queen Mother in London once. I am practically crushed and bleeding, and I may go in for writing the Incoming Ships Department in The Wall Street Journal as a result.

  In the first place, you have to rehearse these broadcasting acts. You have to go around at about five o’clock in the afternoon of the day when you are “going on the air” and run over your number just as if somebody were going to hear it. The “studio” is full of people even at that time of the day, musicians, timekeepers, trainers, and managers (there are sixteen managers to every program, each one under the impression that he is boss), and you have to say your piece out loud and try not to look silly. It was all I could do to say my piece out loud. I gave up trying not to look silly right at the start.

  Come with me into the broadcasting studio in the afternoon, just as the shadows are beginning to deepen, and let us wander, hand in hand, through Radio Land. A big room, with perhaps seventy-five people in it roaming aimlessly about, just like a real business office. What you are supposed to do is to run over your number to see how long it takes. Everyone has a stop-watch, including the girl who checks your coat. And while the orchestra is trying to find “A” and the boy who works the dynamo is trying to find his helper, and the assistant manager is trying to find the second assistant manager, and the sunshine is trying to find the roses, you mutter in a low tone whatever it is you think you are going to say that night while a lady holds a stop-watch on you without even listening. She’s no fool. Her job is just to find out how long it takes. She isn’t paid for listening to a lot of junk. She isn’t even paid for looking at you.

  All right. You say your piece and your rehearsal is over. You find that you did it in 9-2/5 minutes flat, on a wet track, too. That’s great, they tell you. The week before, Irvin Cobb did only 10 flat. You then rush into the showers and have a rubdown, followed by a test to see if your voice can be heard in the next room. If they can’t hear your voice in the next room, there isn’t much chance of its being heard in Flagstaff, Arizona.

  So you go into a little box and say the first paragraph over again, this time into what they jokingly call the “mike.” Sometimes you say it into the “mike” and sometimes into the “pat,” but it’s always the same old story about the two Irishmen. Well, it turns out that your voice isn’t much good. You must raise it a little – not louder, mind you, just higher. Or else you must lower it. Not softer, but deeper. Mr. Werrenrath, the celebrated Danny Deever hummer, was one of those in charge at my tryout and he made the big mistake of telling me that I ought to make my voice sound more like a nance. “’Way up here,” he said, indicating where he puts “The Road to Mandalay” when he isn’t using it, “’way up here in the roof of the mouth.” So I socked him and left in a huff. Mr. Werrenrath ought to know better than that.

  I was told to come back at nine, as the concert was to begin at nine-thirty. Just what I was supposed to do between nine and nine-thirty I never could figure out, because if there ever was a dull period in the world’s activities it is while people are waiting to begin a radio program. You can’t even peek out through the curtain and see who is coming in – because there is nobody coming in.

  We all got in a little room, the orchestra, the male quartet, six representatives of the advertising agency who were running the show, a delegation of rooters from General Motors, and a dozen substitutes who were on hand in case that anything went wrong. The windows were then closed and the steam turned on. There was a sign up saying that no one could smoke, but you couldn’t help it. You were lucky if you didn’t burst into flames.

  Nine-thirty! The program begins! Mr. Carlin, the announcer, steps to the “mike” and says: “Good evening, everybody! We are going to listen tonight to Mr. Robert Benchley who—” And you can just hear radio machines from Maine to California being shut off. There were probably more people tuning in on weather reports that night than at any other time in radio history.

  However, there is no backing out now and Grandpa steps to the machine. He has his little piece all fixed up, but it suddenly doesn’t seem so good. The first wise-crack is pulled into silence. When you are working on a stage, at least you can hear yourself getting the razzberry. On the radio you feel as if you were saying it into Grant’s Tomb after he had been taken out. The second wise-crack, and an even worse silence. Grandpa looks around to see if maybe the orchestra isn’t laughing. The banjo player is puttering with a hangnail. The drummer and the flute player are working on a problem of tick-tack-toe. The leader is looking out the window and dreaming of the days when he thought he was going to be a drum-major. And here are you, broken-hearted, and wondering what it’s all about.

  The funny thing about wise-cracks is that, if you don’t get any reaction, they cease being wise-cracks, even to you. The funniest line in the world (which I would like to think up some day but never seem to), if spoken into a vacuum, would sound like the biggest flop in the world. But that is a psychological feature which needs elaboration and this is no place for elaboration. The only thing that can be said here is that if nobody laughs, it isn’t funny, that’s all.

  This goes on for fifteen minutes. All there is in the room is the sound of your own voice, which suddenly becomes the most revolting sound you have ever heard. In the middle of my little act, it was necessary for the male quartet to step up and break the silence with a song. This gave me my chance. I grabbed my hat and said to Mr. Carlin: “Well, I’ll be off! See you later.” Mr. Carlin said that I was still expected to do more after the quartet stopped. I asked him to do it. “Tell them anything,” I said; “tell them that I got a telephone call that my little boy has been arrested. Tell them I have fainted. I’m going!”

  But the quartet had stopped and I was “on the air” again. Five more minutes of silent prayer and the act was over. Jumping on my horse, wh
ich I had left saddled and bridled at the door, I rode away into the night. My radio career was at an end.

  Ever since then I have been getting letters from Montgomery, Alabama, and Wichita, Kansas, giving answers to some riddles I had asked. I happened to say in the course of my talk that I had lost my hat at the Harvard-Yale game and that if any of my radio audience knew where it was I would appreciate their letting me know. To date, I have received six old hats, C.O.D., seventeen telegrams saying that my hat was in New Rochelle, St. Louis, and Buffalo, and four proposals of marriage. My mother, who heard the thing from Worcester, Mass., called up that night and asked if I had a cold and was I taking good care of myself. My wife and children, who had gathered around the family radio to hear Daddy make a fool of himself, couldn’t get the radio to work and heard only an SOS from a ship at sea. As a matter of fact, that SOS was from Daddy himself. From now on I do my act on a stage in front of people where I can see the vegetables coming in time to dodge.

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  Fascinating Crimes

  #5 – The Strange Case

  of the Vermont Judiciary

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  Residents of Water Street, Bellows Falls (Vt.), are not naturally sound sleepers, owing to the proximity of the Bellows Falls Light and Power Co. and its attendant thumpings, but fifteen years before the erection of the light-and-power plant there was nothing to disturb the slumbers of Water Streetites, with the possible exception of the bestial activities of Roscoe Erkle. For it was Mr. Erkle’s whim to creep up upon people as they slept and, leaping on their chests, to cram poisoned biscuits into their mouths until they died, either from the poison or from choking on the crumbs.

  A tolerant citizenry stood this as long as it could decently be expected to, and then had Roscoe Erkle arrested. It is not this phase of his career in which we are interested, however, so much as the remarkable series of events which followed.

  His trial began at St. Albans, Franklin County, on Wednesday morning, May 7, 1881. Defending Erkle was an attorney appointed by the Court, Enos J. Wheefer. Mr. Wheefer, being deaf, had not heard the name of his client or he would never have taken the case. He thought for several days that he was defending Roscoe Conkling and had drawn up his case with Conkling in mind.

  Atty. Herbert J. McNeil represented the State and, as it later turned out, a tragic fate gave the case into the hands of Judge Alonso Presty for hearing.

  Judge Presty was one of the leaders of the Vermont bar at the time and a man of impeccable habits. It was recalled after his untimely death that he had been something of a rounder in his day, having been a leader in barn-dancing circles while in law school, but since donning the sock and buskin his conduct had been propriety itself. Which makes the events that we are about to relate all the more puzzling.

  On the opening day of the trial, Atty. McNeil was submitting as evidence passages from the prisoner’s diary which indicated that the murders were not only premeditated but a source of considerable delight to Mr. Erkle. It might perhaps be interesting to give a sample page from the diary:

  “Oct. 7 – Cool and fair. Sharp tinge of Fall in the air. New shipment of arsenic arrived from W. Spent all day powdering biscuits and then toasting them. Look good enough to eat.

  “Oct. 8 – Raw, with N. E. wind. Betsy came in for a minute and we did anagrams. (Editor’s Note: Betsy was Erkle’s cow.)

  “Oct. 9 – Still raw. Cleaned up Water Street on the left-hand side, with the exception of old Wassner who just wouldn’t open his mouth. Home and read till after midnight. That man Carlyle certainly had the dope on the French Revolution, all right, all right.”

  As Atty. McNeil read these excerpts from the diary in a droning voice, the breath of Vermont May-time wafted in at the open windows of the courtroom. Now and then a bee hummed in and out, as if to say: “Buz-z-z-z-z-z-z!” Judge Presty sat high above the throng, head resting on his hand, to all intents and purposes asleep.

  Suddenly the attorney for the defendant arose and said: “I protest, Your Honor. I can not hear what my learned colleague is saying, but I don’t like his expression!”

  There was silence while all eyes turned on the Judge. But the Judge did not move. Thinking that he had fallen asleep, as was his custom during the May term, the attorneys went on. It was not until he had gradually slipped forward into the glass of water which stood before him on his desk that it was discovered that he was dead!

  The trial was immediately halted and an investigation begun. Nothing could be discovered about the Judge’s person which would give a clue to his mysterious lapse except a tiny red spot just behind his right ear. This, however, was laid to indigestion and the Judge was buried.

  Another trial was called for October 10, again in St. Albans. This time Judge Walter M. Bondy was presiding, and the same two attorneys opposed each other. Roscoe Erkle had, during the summer, raised a red beard and looked charming.

  On the second day of the trial, while Atty. McNeil was reading the prisoner’s diary, Judge Bondy passed away quietly at his bench, with the same little red spot behind his right ear that had characterized the cadaver of his predecessor. The trial was again halted, and a new one set for the following May.

  By this time, the matter had become one for serious concern. Erkle was questioned, but his only reply was: “Let them mind their own business, then.” He had now begun to put pomade on his beard and had it parted in the middle, and, as a result, had married one of the richest spinsters in that section of Vermont.

  We need not go into the repetitious account of the succeeding trials. Suffice it to say that the following May Judge Rapf died at his post, the following October Judge Orsenigal, the May following that a Judge O’Heel, who had been imported from New Hampshire without being told the history of the case, and the succeeding solstices saw the mysterious deaths of Judges Wheeler (the counsel for the defense in the first trial, who had, in the meantime, been appointed Judge because of his deafness), Rossberg, Whelan, Rock, and Brady. And, in each case, the little telltale mark behind the ear.

  The State then decided to rest its case and declare it nol-prossed. Judges were not so plentiful in Vermont that they could afford to go on at this rate. Erkle was released on his own recognizance, took up the study of law, and is, at latest accounts, a well-to-do patent attorney in Oldham. Every May and every October he reports at St. Albans to see if they want to try him again, but the Court laughingly postpones the case until the next term., holding its hand over its right ear the while.

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  The Problem

  of the Used Car

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  With the introduction of the new Ford car the problem of the used car becomes a national menace comparable only with the old plague of the seven-year locusts. It was bad enough before – as what wasn’t?

  For years, automobile manufacturers have been confronted with the problem of what to do with the second-hand cars turned in for new ones. The fact that they have given any money at all on second-hand cars shows what a public-spirited crowd the manufacturers are. It is like giving money for the return of water on the knee. When they get their old cars back, what are they to do with them? They can’t eat them – that is, not unless they have been boiled down to practically nothing.

  Some one has suggested that they be filled with potted plants and used to decorate the public parks, or stuffed with almond meats and used as favors. There is no sense in discussing these solutions. They are obviously too silly. However, we may come back to them if we can’t think of something else.

  Certain it is that there are a great many more used cars than there are used drivers. A dealer in the Middle West had so many used cars out behind his garage that he closed his house and brought his family down to live in the cars – one car for the living-room, one for the dining-room and, without mentioning any names, one for brushing the children’s teeth in. The only trouble was that the smaller children kept falling off t
he running-boards and hurting themselves and it was difficult getting the winter’s coal into the car used for the cellar. The coal men had to toss it in, piece by piece.

  Of course, the dealers sooner or later send the used cars back to the factory, but that just puts the problem off on the factory. A factory is supposed to make cars – not serve as a Bide-A-Wee Home for them. Several factories have had to suspend operations on new cars altogether in order to make room for the old ones. This was perhaps overdoing the sentimental phase of the thing a bit, but with the growing tendency toward sentimentality and service in business we are going to find more and more manufacturers who just haven’t the heart to turn old cars out on the street when they come straggling home.

  The sentimental side of a second-hand car is one which has never been brought out sufficiently. It is not so much the wear and tear which a car has been subjected to during its years of service that makes it difficult to dispose of it. It is the ghosts and memories of former owners which infest its curtains and cushions and make it a veritable haunted house of old associations. I have had dealers tell me that on a still moonlight night they can hardly sleep because of the whistling and clanking which go on among the old cars behind the garage, spirits of Christmas Past and Summer Vacations of years gone by, which flit in and out of the sedans and roadsters, making night hideous for people in the vicinity.

  One dealer, braver than the rest, went out one night and poked around among the used cars to see where the noise was coming from. He found nothing.

  Several manufacturers have asked me: “What are we to do, Bob?” And my answer always has been: “What would Lincoln have done? (Not the Lincoln Company – the other Lincoln.) You manufacturers are confronted by one of the big problems of the age. Let’s sit down and talk this thing over sanely, as one man to another.”