Chips Off the Old Benchley

by Robert Benchley

Your Boy and His Dog

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  People are constantly writing in to this department and asking: “What kind of dog shall I give my boy?” or sometimes: “What kind of boy shall I give my dog?” And although we are always somewhat surprised to get a query like this, ours really being the Jam and Fern Question Box, we usually give the same answer to both forms of inquiry: “Are you quite sure that you want to do either?” This confuses them, and we are able to snatch a few more minutes for our regular work.

  But the question of Boy and Dog is one which will not be downed. There is no doubt that every healthy, normal boy (if there is such a thing in these days of Child Study) should own a dog at some time in his life, preferably between the ages of forty-five and fifty. Give a dog to a boy who is much younger and his parents will find themselves obliged to pack up and go to the Sailors’ Snug Harbor to live until the dog runs away – which he will do as soon as the first pretty face comes along.

  But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down – very important traits in times like these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy’s bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.

  In buying a dog for a very small child, attention must be paid to one or two essential points. In the first place, the dog must be one which will come apart easily or of such a breed that the sizing will get pasty and all gummed up when wet. Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other. The dachshund being so long also makes it difficult for a very small child to go through with the favorite juvenile maneuver of lifting the dog’s hind legs up in the air and wheeling it along like a barrow, cooing, “Diddy-ap!” Any small child trying to lift a dachshund’s hind legs up very high is going to find itself flat on its back.

  For the very small child who likes to pick animals up around the middle and carry them over to the fireplace, mastiffs, St. Bernards, or Russian wolfhounds are not indicated – that is, not if the child is of any value at all. It is not that the larger dogs resent being carried around the middle and dropped in the fireplace (in fact, the smaller the dog, the more touchy it is in matters of dignity, as is so often the case with people and nations); but, even though a mastiff does everything that it can to help the child in carrying it by the diaphragm, there are matters of gravity to be reckoned with which make it impossible to carry the thing through without something being broken. If a dog could be trained to wrestle and throw the child immediately, a great deal of time could be saved.

  But, as we have suggested, the ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty. By this time the boy ought to have attained his full growth and, provided he is ever going to, ought to know more or less what he wants to make of himself in life. At this age the dog will be more of a companion than a chattel, and, if necessary, can be counted upon to carry the boy by the middle and drop him into bed in case sleep overcomes him at a dinner or camp meeting or anything. It can also be counted upon to tell him he has made a fool of himself and embarrassed all his friends. A wife could do no more.

  The training of the dog is something which should be left to the boy, as this teaches him responsibility and accustoms him to the use of authority, probably the only time he will ever have a chance to use it. If, for example, the dog insists on following the boy when he is leaving the house, even after repeated commands to “Go on back home!” the boy must decide on one of two courses. He must either take the dog back to the house and lock it in the cellar, or, as an alternate course, he can give up the idea of going out himself and stay with the dog. The latter is the better way, especially if the dog is in good voice and given to screaming the house down.

  There has always been considerable difference of opinion as to whether or not a dog really thinks. I, personally, have no doubt that distinct mental processes do go on inside the dog’s brain, although many times these processes are hardly worthy of the name. I have known dogs, especially puppies, who were almost as stupid as humans in their mental reactions.

  The only reason that puppies do not get into more trouble than they do (if there is any more trouble than that which puppies get into) is that they are so small. A child, for instance, should not expect to be able to fall as heavily, eat as heartily of shoe leather, or throw up as casually as a puppy does, for there is more bulk to a child and the results of these practices will be more serious in exact proportion to the size and capacity. Whereas, for example, a puppy might be able to eat only the toe of a slipper, a child might well succeed in eating the whole shoe – which, considering the nails and everything, would not be wise.

  One of the reasons why dogs are given credit for serious thinking is the formation of their eyebrows. A dog lying in front of a fire and looking up at his master may appear pathetic, disapproving, sage, or amused, according to the angle at which its eyebrows are set by nature.

  It is quite possible, and even probable, that nothing at all is going on behind the eyebrows. In fact, one dog who had a great reputation for sagacity once told me in confidence that most of the time when he was supposed to be regarding a human with an age-old philosophical rumination he was really asleep behind his shaggy overhanging brows. “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” he said, “when I found out that people were talking about my wisdom and suggesting running me for President.”

  This, of course, offers a possibility for the future of the child itself. As soon as the boy makes up his mind just what type of man he wants to be, he could buy some crêpe hair and a bottle of spirit gum and make himself a pair of eyebrows to suit the rôle: converging toward the nose if he wants to be a judge or savant; pointing upward from the edge of the eyes if he wants to be a worried-looking man, like a broker; elevated to his forehead if he plans on simulating surprise as a personal characteristic; and in red patches if he intends being a stage Irishman.

  In this way he may be able to get away with a great deal, as his pal the dog does.

  At any rate, the important thing is to get a dog for the boy and see what each can teach the other. The way things are going now with our Younger Generation, the chances are that before long the dog will be smoking, drinking gin, and wearing a soft hat pulled over one eye.

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  “Good Luck”

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  And now they are trying to take away our superstitions from us. First they tax us until it is cheaper not to earn any money at all, then they force us to drink beer, and now they come along and tell us that we mustn’t believe that if your nose itches you are going to have company.

  I am not a superstitious man myself, but no Columbia University professor is going to sit there and tell me that if an actor (or anybody) whistles in a dressing room it doesn’t mean bad luck for the person nearest the door. That’s a scientific fact.

  Neither will I be told that I must throw out all the little odds and ends of clothing and currency that I have accumulated during the past quarter of a century, each one of which has been certified by the United States Bureau of Standards as a definite good luck piece. I have proved their worth time after time (chiefly by not having had them with me when I had bad luck). I have an old green tie which I have worn so much that it now looks as if I were being led out to be lynched, and has that ever failed me? Never! I may not have always had good luck with it on, but it was because I forgot to wrap this long end around twice while tying it, or because I didn’t have the ends even. The tie itself is surefire good luck, and I’ll let no crack-brained theorist tell me different.

  Not being really superstitious, I can look at the thing calmly. When I was a boy I used to have a silly idea that if I could run upstairs two at a time and reach the first landing before the outside door had shut behind me, everything would be all right. (I don’t quite know w
hat I meant by “everything will be all right,” but I guess that I meant really everything, which was a wild-eyed demand to begin with.) Now that I have reached an age where I am lucky if I barely get inside the outer door before it shuts on me, I see that my youthful idea was sheer superstition. I am under no illusions about superstition when it is superstition.

  But some day I am going to put on all my good luck pieces of clothing and carry all my good luck coins and go right out and face the world. And, if I don’t get arrested for masquerading as an Indian medicine man, I’ll bet I have better luck than that Columbia professor with all his text-book theories.

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  “Safety Second”

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  If you are one of those people who are constantly getting hurt, falling down or up, crashing into railway trains or tumbling out of people’s houses, you have probably wondered why it is. You have probably asked yourself, as soon as you could talk, “Why is it that I seem to be unable to lift a piece of asparagus to my mouth without poking it in my eye, or button my clothes without catching my finger in the buttonhole and tearing the ligament to shreds?” You ask this of yourself, and probably your insurance company asks it too. It almost looks as if there were something fishy about it all.

  As it is the insurance companies who really care (the hell with your wrenched ligaments – it costs them money) they have put some of their best minds to work on the subject, and a great, big report, all bound in red crocodile (red with embarrassment), has been submitted by the Premium Defaulters’ Service Bureau, showing that certain people get hurt oftener than certain others. And for very definite reasons.

  Of course, it is no fair to include in this analysis those hearty guys who go around slapping people on sunburned necks or pushing them off rafts. They are going to get hurt anyway. There is nothing that insurance companies can do for them except kill them before they start out in the morning. I killed seven last year, and am looking forward to a bumper crop this summer. What we are after is the reason why certain people get hurt in spite of themselves. Are you one? Are you two?

  According to the report issued by the Premium Defaulters’ Service Bureau, 30 per cent of the motormen on a well-known trolley-line had 78 per cent of the accidents, or in other words, 30 per cent of the motormen were dumber than the rest. In still other words (we have hundreds more, so don’t get worried) there is such a thing as an “accident germ” which makes A more liable to accidents than B. It is the same germ which makes A buy more Peruvian bonds than B, or which makes B walk off more curbings than C. It is just one of Nature’s phenomena, that’s all.

  Take, for example, the safety devices which were placed on certain machines when the “Safety First” campaigns were started, way back in 1912. Some of them have never been used since, in spite of the pretty posters. Some of them have been used, but simply to hang jumpers on while the men were changing their clothes. But the cases with which the insurance men have the most trouble are those in which workers get hurt on the safety devices. This type of injury calls for special attention. There was one man, in a paper mill in Massachusetts, who was tending a so-called “beater,” in which the pulp is taken and thrashed around until it looks something awful. (On Saturdays some of the workers used to bring their wives up for a little going-over, just to save themselves the trouble that night.) A worker, whom we will call Cassidy, because his name was Cassidy, had tended a “beater” for thirty-three years and had never had an accident. The safety device was put on, under the auspices of the State Insurance and Fidelity League, and, the very first day, Cassidy got flustered and dropped one leg of his trousers in the safety device, with the result that he was caught up in the machine and swashed around until all they had to do was to dry him out and they could have printed the Sunday Times on him. In fact, that is just what they did do, and it was one of the best editions of the Sunday Times that ever was run off the presses. It had human interest.

  But the case of Cassidy is still not what we are after in this survey. Cassidy’s injury was a special event in Cassidy’s life, and there are some workers to whom injury is just an item in the day’s work, like lighting a pipe. They get cut, go and have it bandaged, get cut again, go and have it bandaged, get cut again, and by that time it is five-thirty. On their days off, they get cut on the edge of their newspaper. There was one man, for instance, who had been tending a saw for ten years and who had got splinters in his eye regularly five times a week. There was some suspicion that he held his eye out and put it on the splinters as they flew off the saw, but he always denied this. Then the Safety First Committee bought goggles for the men, and the very first day he got the goggles caught in his eye and had to have the whole thing readjusted at the nearest drugstore (for which the druggist charged nothing). He collected under the head of “Occupational Disease,” but the insurance company was pretty sore about the whole thing and offered to get him a job in a bank. He took it, and within a week had what is known as “eye-penny,” caused by flying particles of pennies being caught in the under lid, resulting in great pain. This is what is called an “habitual risk,” and is exactly the thing that the insurance companies are trying to stamp out.

  Let us say that you start to cross a street. You are trying to look up a word in a dictionary, or are worrying about how you are going to explain to your wife that you haven’t got the week’s pay envelope. You are obviously in no condition to be crossing a street, but, as everyone can’t live on the same side of any one street, you sometimes have to. The traffic-lights are against you, but so is everything else in this world, so what difference can one little traffic-light make? The next thing you know you are halfway into the cylinder head of a motor and someone is saying: “Look in his pockets and see if he has an address-book there.” This rather makes you stop short and give pause. Why should you have been hit in preference to the three dozen other people who were crossing the street with you against the lights?

  The insurance company report says that it is because you were (1) day-dreaming (2) worried over something (3) just a plain damn fool. The day-dreaming part is something that can’t very well be regulated. Stop day-dreaming, and you stop Keats and Shelley (although Keats and Shelley stopped themselves pretty successfully, without outside interference). Being just a plain damn fool is another complaint over which modern medicine seems to have no control. Look at the stock market (or, rather, let’s not look. There is trouble enough in the world as it is). But when investigators come right out and say that one of the big causes of accidents is the fact that people are worried, then a solution presents itself with almost startling clarity. Keep people from being worried.

  This would be my scheme: In the center of each town or city have a big pile of money, preferably in one and five dollar bills (it is so hard to get larger denominations changed). Whenever anyone feels a worry coming on, let him walk up to this pile, say “Hello, Joe!” to the keeper, take out whatever amount he needs, and then go on home. I venture to say that in this way accidents resulting from worry could be reduced eighty per cent. I don’t suppose the thing could ever be put into practice, however, as in most towns and cities the central square is so full of parked automobiles that there wouldn’t be any place for a pile of loose money.

  There is one other reason given in this report as to why people get hurt in traffic or at machines or from toppling off doorsteps. It is that the one who is injured is unable to conform to a fixed rhythm. A good dancer, or a good musician, it is said, seldom is a person prone to accidents. Most modern machinery has a certain rhythm to which the man or woman who controls it, or who is subject to its workings, must conform. If he does not conform, he gets hurt. This may be true, but I myself have got just as badly hurt dancing as I have from tripping over high-powered Rolls-Royces, and I venture to say that if you were to put one of the Russian ballet at work at a circular saw, she would get hurt, too. In order for rhythm to help you keep out of trouble, things have got to be going in y
our rhythm, not you in theirs.

  My only solution to the problem of habitual accidents (and, so far, nobody has asked me for my solution) is for everyone to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.

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  Tiptoeing Down

  Memory Lane

  In the Manner of

  Our Older Literary Reminiscers

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  In these random wanderings down “Memory Lane” (as I call it – and who does not?) I am relying chiefly on a rather faulty faculty for reminiscence, a diary, belonging to somebody else, for 1890 (or rather the first three weeks of 1890, ending with a big blot) and some old bound volumes of Harper’s Round Table for 1895-7 (1896 missing). For any discrepancies or downright lies, I beg the indulgence due an old man who has already become something of a bore.

  Life in literary circles in New York during the late eighteen-nineties and early eighteen-seventies was quite different from literary life today. In the first place, more authors wore large mustaches and beards, which complicated things considerably. One might meet Walt Whitman (if one weren’t careful) and think that it was Joachin Miller, except for the fact that Whitman lived in the East and Miller (thank God!) lived in the West. I remember on one occasion that Miller met Whitman in the lobby of the old Fifth Avenue Hotel (then just the plain Fifth Avenue Hotel, without the “old”) and Miller said: “For a minute I thought you were Miller!” to which Whitman replied: “For a minute I thought you were Whitman!” It was a contretemps, all right. And not a very good one, either.