20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or David Copperfield

by Robert Benchley

  Interview No. 6. 22 years old. White male. Mumbled so it was impossible to tell what he thought.

  Interview No. 7. 45 years old. White female. Was at Lichy Lake all summer and didn’t like it as well as last summer, owing to the McDostys’ being there. The food was better than last summer but the crowd not so nice as a whole. Heard a good story the other day about a little boy who was asked by his teacher what a kangaroo was.

  Interview No. 8. This included several people, all of whom got mixed up as the interview proceeded. One person would start to talk and then it seemed as if it were an entirely different person talking. This went on for some time.

  Interview No. 14. (There were no interviews numbered 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.) Is for Hoover because Hoover has been President for eight years and knows the ropes. To put a new man in would be folly. Besides, Smith is so mixed up with the Mohammedans that we would all have to be facing east every morning if he got in and this particular voter likes to face west.

  RESULT OF STRAW VOTE TO DATE

  Hoover . . . . 41 Hoover . . . . 41

  Smith . . . . . 41 Smith . . . . . 41

  Rogers . . . . 41 Rogers . . . . 41

  (The above tabulation is all wrong)

  In certain sections of the country it was found that there was a great deal of Rutherford B. Hayes sentiment, but purely sentiment, as Rutherford B. Hayes is not alive any more. (We shall probably get an indignant letter from Rutherford B. Hayes tomorrow, saying, “Like Mark Twain, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”) It is hard to keep sentiment out of a political canvass, as people have their heroes and heroines (many still held to Rowena in “Ivanhoe” as their favorite heroine, but it has always seemed to us that Rowena was a little colorless. Give us somebody like Becky Sharp. Give us somebody like Becky Sharp, plenty of Charles Heidsieck 1919 and a cozy nook and watch the color come back into these cheeks!)

  Later we may try to tell you about a big trend that we discovered – or rather, the trend that we hope to have discovered by then. We are on the trail of this trend now and hope to catch up with it any day if we hurry. When last seen, the trend had stopped over in Elkhart, Ill., to set its watch back an hour to Central Standard Time. Or would it be setting its watch ahead? We shall soon find out.

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  The Packer’s Assistant

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  There is a great deal in the art of packing a suitcase or trunk. I might even let it go at that and go on to some other subject. However, having got you all excited about the art of packing, it would be rather mean of me to leave you flat.

  At the risk of sounding methodical, I must advise making out a list of the things you want to pack before you even turn a hand to the actual work. In this way, you forget only those things which you forget to put down on the list, instead of the old way of forgetting things haphazardly. If you run over in your mind every article of clothing that you are going to wear on any particular occasion on your trip, beginning with underclothes and working right on up through and including overcoat, hat and even Inverness cape, you can hardly miss anything.

  For example, suppose you are going hunting with a falcon. You stand very still with a pencil and paper, ready to jot down the items, and say to yourself (not loud enough to be heard, or they may not let you go), “Falconry shirt and running-pants socks – old green sweater – kilt – dress-shoes – hood for falcon – falcon for hood – and derby.” As you say each one of these, write it down on your list, and when you have finished you will have a neat little list, suitable for framing, and you will feel easy in your mind about not having forgotten anything, unless possibly the trousers. And with a kilt, you won’t need trousers anyway – unless you are going to hunt after the sun goes down and it gets chilly.

  Now all this should be done on the morning of your departure – provided you are departing late in the afternoon. This will leave you plenty of time to do the thing right and check up on your list. Of course, there will be some accessories which you will have to go out and buy, unless by some lucky chance you happen to live right in the back room of a men’s furnishing store. People do, you know.

  Let us say that, having made out your list, you find that you need some new studs and a tube of tooth-paste. One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of tooth-paste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are planning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out. You may think that you will buy it on the way to the train – in one of those drug-stores which clutter up the railway station when you are not traveling but which turn into fruit-stores and tobacco shops when you are rushing for a train. My advice to you would be to go right out and buy the tooth-paste the minute you find you need it and don’t start packing until you have everything laid out on the bed.

  Let us say that you discover that you need studs and tooth-paste at eleven in the morning. Your train leaves at five. (I’ll bet you know right now what train I’m thinking of.) You must go right out then, taking your list with you, and go to the nearest drug-store, where you will also be wheedled into buying a dictionary, having always needed one.

  The studs, of course, will have to be bought at a stud-store, and, as it will be very nearly lunch time, it will be better to put off buying them until you have eaten.

  The choice of a place to eat when you are out buying studs is very important and I would recommend a club of some sort if you happen to belong to one. Here you will meet congenial people and may perhaps even get into a bridge game. In that event, it is well to remember that you lead the fourth highest of your longest and strongest suit, and stick to Scotch if you start out with Scotch. You can’t go wrong if you follow these directions to the letter.

  If there is anybody in the club who can carry a tenor, get him to come in and try humming “Kentucky Babe.” A good baritone would be too much to ask but there will be plenty who can fake a bass. And remember that when you come to the change, you slide from D to B to F sharp to E, and not from D to B to F flat to E, as so many novices at packing are likely to do. D, B, F sharp, E. That’s right.

  By now it will be quarter of five and all you have to do is to get home, throw a few things into your bag, including your list (so that you will know what to buy when you reach your destination), and you are off!

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  The Birth of

  a College Comic Paper

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  SCENE: The editorial sanctum of The Razor-Blade, the college comic publication, issued bi-weekly if the editors can get enough stuff together. It is 9:30 in the evening of the day on which all copy was due at the printers’ at 5.

  EDITORS PRESENT: YOULING, ’28, Chairman; BEAMISH, ’28; ROFFEN, ’29; PHTELO, ’29. The remaining twelve members of the Board have never been seen since their election in February.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Well, let’s see, what have we got? What about the pictures?

  PHTELO, ’29: Do, do, yo-de-do, do-do-yo-de-do

  THE CHAIRMAN: Come on now! Cut the fooling! What pictures have we got?

  ART EDITOR: Well, let’s see, we’ve got four girls’ heads and two full-lengths of girls lying on couches. Then there are four imitation John Helds and three straight he-and-she drawings with no jokes to go with them. And a caricature of – let’s see, the name’s on the back – a caricature of Dean Whiffy.

  CHAIRMAN: What about text?

  PHTELO, ’29: Do, do-yo-de-do, do

  CHAIRMAN: Come on now! Cut the fooling! We’ve got to get this number down tonight. What about text?

  MANUSCRIPT EDITOR: Eighteen poems, five of them to Milady’s ankle, and twenty-nine necking jokes. If we use them all, we are still five whole pages short.

  CHAIRMAN: Well, let’s see. Give us some pins. Give us a girl’s head for the frontispiece and we can run the verse on skiing under it.

  (ROFFEN and BEAMISH leav
e,

  having ten-o’clock dates.)

  CHAIRMAN (continuing): Well, let’s see. We can give each of the girls’ heads a page. There’s four full pages and four poems to go with them.

  PHTELO, ’29: Do you want any lemon peel in yours, Chief?

  CHAIRMAN: Come on now! Cut the fooling! We’ve got to get this number down tonight. Give us some more necking jokes and find some drawings of two studes in fur coats to run over them. Put a John Held tracing on every other page. How many pages is that?

  DUMMY EDITOR: We still lack three pages of filling.

  CHAIRMAN: We’ll have to run the best Held tracing as a full page and print one of the verses in Old English type for a full page. Have we got one that sounds like Dorothy Parker’s?

  MANUSCRIPT EDITOR: Sure, they all do.

  CHAIRMAN: Give us the best and get the printer to run a stock border around it. There’s that page.

  (ROFFEN and BEAMISH return

  from ten-o’clock dates, accompanied by friends.)

  ROFFEN, BEAMISH and FRIENDS: Sometimes I’m happy – sometimes I’m sad – sometimes I’m—

  PHTELO, ’29: Do-yo-do-de do, do yo do de-do, Do!

  CHAIRMAN: Come on now! Cut the singing! We’ve got to get this number down tonight.

  ROFFEN, BEAMISH and FRIENDS, joined by PHIELO, ’29: We’ve got to get the number down tonight, boys, we’ve got to get the number down tonight, was the trainman’s lullaby.

  CHAIRMAN: Oh, send what we’ve got down and mark “Copy to come” and “Space to fill” on the pages that don’t fill.

  THE ENTIRE BOARD, with FRIENDS (exiting): Do-do-yo-de-do, do-do-yo-de-do, Do!

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  A Christmas Garland

  of Books

  * * *

  Among the little bundle of books especially selected for Christmas-Wistmas, perhaps the most pat is “Rubber Hand Stamps and the Manipulation of India Rubber” by T. O’Conor Sloane. Into it Mr. Sloane has put the spirit of Yuletide which all of us must feel, whether we are cynical enough to deny it or not.

  Beginning with a short, and very dirty, history of the sources of India Rubber, the author takes us by the hand and leads us into the fairy-land of rubber manipulation. And it is well that he does, for without his guidance we should have made an awful mess of the next rubber-stamp we tried to make. As he says on page 35: “It will be evident from the description to come that it is not advisable for anyone without considerable apparatus to attempt to clean and wash (“to sheet”), to masticate, or to mix india rubber.” Even if we had the apparatus, we would probably be content with simply “sheeting” and mixing the india rubber and leave the masticating for other less pernickety people to go through with. We may be an old maid about such things, but it is too late now for us to learn to like new things.

  It seems that in the making of rubber stamps a preparation knows as “flong” is necessary. Mr. Sloane assures us that anyone who has watched the stereotyping of a large daily newspaper knows what “flong” is. Perhaps our ignorance is due to the fact that we were on the editorial end of a daily newspaper and went down into the composing-room only when it was necessary to rescue some mistake we had made from the forms. At any rate, we didn’t know what “flong” was and we don’t want to know. A man must keep certain reticences these days or he will just have no standards left at all.

  It is not generally known how simple it is to make things out of rubber. “The writer has obtained excellent results from pieces of an old discarded bicycle tire. The great point is to apply a heavy pressure to the hot material. Many other articles can be thus produced extemporaneously.” (Page 78.) This should lend quite a bit of excitement to the manipulation of india rubber. Imagine working along quietly making, let us say, rubber type and then finding that, extemporaneously, you had a rubber Negro doll or balloon on your hands! A man’s whole life could be changed by such a fortuitous slip of the rubber.

  Not the least of Mr. Sloane’s contributions to popular knowledge is his sly insertion, under the very noses of the authorities, of what he calls the “Old Home Receipt” (ostensibly for “roller-composition,” but we know better, eh, Mr. Sloane?). The “Old Home Receipt” specifies “Glue 2 lbs. soaked over night, to New Orleans molasses 1 gallon. Not durable, but excellent while it lasts.” We feel sure that we have been served something made from this “Old Home receipt,” but would suggest to Mr. Sloane that he try putting in just a dash of absinthe. It makes it more durable.

  We can recommend Laurence Vail Coleman’s “Manual for Small Museums” to all those who have received or are about to give small museums for Christmas. Having a small museum on your hands with no manual for it is no joke. It sometimes seems as if a small museum were more bother than a large one, but that is only when one is tired and cross.

  From Mr. Coleman’s remarkably comprehensive study of small museums, we find that, as is so often the case, income is a very serious problem. In financing special projects for the museum, such as the purchase of bird groups (if it is a museum that wants bird groups), there is a great play for ingenuity, and Dr. Abbott of the San Diego Museum of Natural History, tells of how they, in San Diego, met the problem:

  The little cases containing bird-groups were offered to tradespeople in the city for display in their windows, the understanding being that the store should pay $50 for the advertising value. Thus, a meadowlark group, representing the male in very bright dress, the female, the nest and eggs, was paid for by a men’s and women’s clothing store and displayed in its window in the early spring with the slogan: “Take a pointer from the birds. Now is the time for your new spring clothes.” A savings-bank took a woodpecker group, showing the storing away of acorns, and a California shrike group (Dr. Abbott ought to know) showing a rather sanguinary example of empaling surplus prey on the spines of a cactus, both displayed under the euphimistic caption “The Saving Instinct” and “Are You Providing for the Future by storing up your dollars [or cadavers] now?” A bush-tit’s nest was taken by a real-estate firm and a mockingbird group by a music house. The local lodge of Elks gave $1200 for a case holding four elks (not members) and so, in time, the entire housing of the groups was accomplished and paid for. We are crazy to know what business houses paid for the rabbit and owl exhibits.

  In the chapter on “Protection from Pests” we looked for a way of dealing with the man in an alpaca coat who grabs your stick away from you as you enter the museum and the young people who use museums for necking assignations, but they were not specified. A blanket formula is given, however, which ought to cover their cases. “The surest way to get rid of pests is to fumigate with hydrocyanic acid in an airtight compartment, but this is a dangerous procedure which has resulted in a loss of human life. [Why “but”?] Another fumigant that is widely used is carbon bisulphide, but this is highly explosive and has caused serious accidents.” This presents a new problem to museum-visitors and would seem to make the thing one of the major risks of modern civilization. If a person can’t be safe from asphyxiation and mutilation while looking at bird-groups, where is one to be safe? It would almost be better to let the pests go for a while, at least until the museum gets started.

  A collection of verse entitled “Through the Years with Mother,” compiled by Eva M. Young, makes a nice gift which might perhaps be given to Father. It contains most of the little poems which have been written about mothers and the general tone of the thing is favorable to motherhood. One, entitled “A Bit O’ Joy,” wears off a little into child-propaganda, but probably would rank as a mother-poem too, for it is presumably the mother who speaks:

  Just a Bit-a-Feller,

  Lips a bit o’ rose,

  Puckered sort o’ puzzled like,

  Wonder if he knows—

  There is one more verse explaining what the Bit-a-Feller might possibly know, but we didn’t go into that. Another one which we left for reading on the train was entitled: “Muvvers” and begins:

  One t
ime, I wuz so very small,

  I prit’ near wuzn’t there at all—

  We can not even tell you what the first two lines are of “Mama’s Dirl.”

  The introduction to “Are Mediums Really Witches?” by John P. Touey begins by saying: “The sole purpose of this book, as its title suggests, is to prove the existence of a personal evil force and demon intervention in human affairs.” This frightened us right at the start, for we are very susceptible to any argument which presupposes a tough break for ourself. There must be some explanation for what happens to us every time we stick our head out doors – or in doors, for that matter.

  Mr. Touey begins with witchcraft in ancient times and comes right straight down to the present day. Even though he quoted “no less an authority than Porphyrius” in his earlier chapter, it was not until we got into the examples of modern people having their bed-clothes pulled off and their hats thrown at them that we began to feel uneasy. The story of the terrible time had by the Fox Sisters in Hydesville, N. Y., seemed pretty conclusive to us at the time of reading (2:15 A.M. this morning) and, frankly, we stopped there. And, believe it or not, a couple of hours later, during our troubled sleep, something pulled the bed-clothes out from the foot of our bed, and we awoke with a nasty head-cold.

  We will pay $100 to Mr. Touey or Sir Oliver Lodge or anyone else who can help us locate the personal demon who has been assigned to us. We would just like to talk to him for five minutes, the big bully!

  We can quote but one example of the fascinating problems presented in John A. Zangerle’s “Principles of Real Estate Appraising” as we are limited in our space assignment, but perhaps from it the reader may get some idea of the charm of the book: