Chips Off the Old Benchley

by Robert Benchley

  “’At’s fine!” say our friends. And then they start a petition around among the other members of the club to have us locked up in the steam-room until August.

  The day for the Big Departure comes around and Eddie finds that, at the last minute, he can’t make the grade. He uses his new rubber-boots to plant bay-trees in, one at each corner of his driveway. The rest of us get started, loaded down with rods and baskets, blankets and flasks, and seven knives to cut fish with. (On reaching the camp next day, it is found that no one in the party has a knife.)

  There is a great deal of singing on the way up. The line-up consists of five tenors and one voice to carry the air. This gives a rich, fruity effect which necessitates each song’s being sung through twenty-five times, exclusive of the number of times we sing it after we have returned to town, to remind one another of what a good time we had singing it on the trip.

  There is also considerable talk about what we are going to do with the extra fish. Roberts is going to send his home to his brother’s family. They love fish. It turns out, oddly enough, that Mac’s father (who lives in Wisconsin) also loves fish, and Mac is going to send his surplus to him. He has always sent his father fish, every Spring, and it seems to be the only thing that has kept the old man alive. Mac says that he has never known such a grand old man as his father, eighty-nine and reads the papers every Sunday, especially the funnies. If anyone takes the funnies out of the paper before his father gets them, he raises a terrible row. At this, Mac starts to cry slightly, just at the thought of his poor old father’s having to go without his funnies, even for one Sunday.

  Skinner, to whom Mac is confiding, also starts to cry a little, but he never lets on that it is at the thought of his own father, thirty years dead, that he is crying. Skinner is too much of a man for that. He lets Mac think that he is affected by the tragedy of Old Mr. Mac. This brings the two men together to a touching degree and they decide not to go on with the fishing trip at all, but to stop at the next town they go through and start in business together for themselves, and when they have made enough money they will have Mac’s father come and live with them. The conversation ends in a disgusting fight between Mac and Skinner over the kind of business they are going into.

  Once in a while someone catches a fish. As I said in the beginning, I, personally, never have, but that is because once I get out in the open air I get so sleepy that I don’t move off my cot, except to eat, from one day to the next.

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  Good Luck,

  and Try and Get It

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  You may think that you are not superstitious, but would you walk under a burning building? Would you hold a hammer in your left hand and bring it down on your right? Would you light three bank-notes with one match? Probably not. But do you know why?

  Most of the superstitions which we have today date back to the Middle Ages, when Superstition was something. In the Middle Ages they were superstition-poor they had so much. For several centuries there a man couldn’t stoop over to lace up his shoon (middle-aged word for “shoes”) in the morning without first throwing salt over his shoulder and wetting his finger in a distillation of wolfsbane. For every single thing they did in those days they had to do three other things first, and, by the end of the day, you know that runs into time. Often they never could get started on the real business at hand because they were so occupied in warding off the Evil Eye; and a man who really took care of himself and ran no chances might very well starve to death before he got through his warding-off exercises.

  For instance, there was a thing called a “mandrake root” which was considered practically infallible for keeping naughty spirits at bay, but you had to go out and dig your own mandrake root. You couldn’t say to your little boy while you were dressing: “Run out into the garden and pull up Daddy’s mandrake root for him this morning.” You had to go and dig it yourself. Furthermore, you had to dig it at midnight, or under just the right conditions of the moon, or it was no good. And, just to make things harder, you had to be deaf, otherwise you would hear the mandrake root shriek when you pulled it up, and, if you once heard that, you would fall down dead. People used to tie the root to a dog and then whistle from a safe distance where they couldn’t hear the root complain. The dog would pull up the root in answering the whistle (as dirty a trick as ever was played on Man’s Best Friend), hear the deadly scream and fall down dead in his tracks. Then the mandrake digger would rush up, grab the root, and tear off to the office. But, by this time, his office was probably in the hands of the sheriff or the water had overflowed the tub and dripped down into the room below, and there he was stuck with a mandrake root and a bill for $115.00.

  Of course, today we know that there is no such thing as Bad Luck, but, just the same, there is no sense in making a fool of yourself. If, simply by walking around a ladder, you can humor some little gnome into not dogging your footsteps all day with a red-hot pea-shooter, then why be narrow-minded? Walk around the ladder, even though you laughingly say to yourself that you are spoiling that little gnome by being so indulgent. What harm can come from walking around the ladder, unless possibly you slip off into the gutter and sprain your ankle?

  The reason why we feel an instinctive urge not to walk under a ladder is fairly interesting (only fairly), and perhaps it would be just as well if I told it to you. If you are superstitious about hearing stories about how superstitions arose, wet your right thumb and turn this page over once.

  It seems that when William the Conqueror (or Lief the Unlucky, as he was known in the Greek version of the fable) first landed in England (you know the date as well as I do – 1215 Magna Carta) he was very nervous for fear that a Certain Party had followed him from Normandy (his real reason for leaving). Every night he used to take a walk around the ramparts of his castle “just to get a breath of fresh air” as he said, but, as he had had nothing but fresh air all day, he fooled nobody. What he really was doing was taking a look to make sure that this Certain Party was not snooping around trying to find a way into the castle to get some evidence on him. One night he came upon a ladder placed up against the wall and, thinking to trap the intruder, he stood under this ladder, very close up against the stone work, to see if he could hear without being seen. It wasn’t a ladder at all (he was pretty unfamiliar with the layout of the castle, having just come from Normandy) but a part of the drawbridge mechanism, and, just at that moment, the man in charge opened up the portcullis and pulled up the bridge to let in one of the menials who had been in town to a dance, and William the Conqueror was catapulted over backwards into the moat (from which all the water had been drawn that very evening to make room for fresh) and wrenched his back very badly. From that day on he gave orders for his bodyguard never to let him walk under a ladder unless he was sure it was a ladder. Gradually this last provision was dropped from the command and it became known as “William’s Folly” to walk under any ladder. Gradually the “William’s Folly” was dropped, and it became just a sap thing to do anyway. But we do not realize that the original form of this superstition was “Don’t walk under a ladder unless you are sure that it is a ladder!” So, you see, we have just been overcautious all these years.

  The practice among athletic teams of carrying along monkeys or owls as mascots comes from a very old custom of monkeys and owls carrying along athletic teams as mascots. The word “mascot” comes from the French mascotte, meaning little witch, but practically nobody today carries around a little witch to bring him good luck. In fact, a little witch would be a liability today, for it would mean just one more mouth to feed and one more railroad ticket to buy, even though you could probably get her on for half-fare.

  But other things, usually inanimate, have taken the place of the little witch, and a great many people have odds and ends of crockery and bric-a-brac which they would not be without on any venture involving luck. (Name three ventures which do not involve luck.) These are sometimes called amulets, and rang
e anywhere from a “lucky penny” (any penny at all is pretty lucky these days) to a small bust of some famous man. I once heard of a man who was carrying a trunk down stairs when a messenger boy came up to him and gave him a note saying that he had won a raffle. From that day on he considered the trunk his “lucky piece” and was afraid to go anywhere without it. This caused him no end of inconvenience and people stopped asking him to parties, but he still persisted in dragging the trunk with him wherever he went, always looking for another messenger boy to come up with another message of good-cheer. He finally hurt himself quite seriously, so that he couldn’t take the trunk with him any more, and then he just stayed at home with the trunk. The last I heard he had not had any more good luck, but he laid it to the Depression.

  Thus we see that, even in this enlightened day and age, the old medieval superstitions still persist in some form or other. Some of us go on feeling that if we sign our name on a little piece of paper, or cheque, we can get money from it. Others are perfectly convinced that if they go into a polling booth and push down a button they are having a part in running the government. If it isn’t one sort of superstition it is another, and sometimes it is both.

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  The Letter Box

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  One of the unhappy results of living in an age like this, with the world resting uneasily on one elbow and twitching nervously, is that most of the letters written in to the newspapers deal with international problems. Nobody seems to care any more about the twippet, or the derivation of the word “squeam.” At least, not enough to write in letters about them.

  That department in newspapers known flippantly as “The Letter Box” or “Communications to the Editor” is now practically unreadable, owing to “Audax,” “Perplexed,” and “Old Subscriber” having given themselves over to solutions of the problem and the Menace of Inflation. There is nothing too big for “Constant Reader” to tackle these days, whereas there used to be nothing too small to fascinate him, not even merples’ eggs.

  Once in a while the first robin gets a paragraph or two in the Letter Box and an occasional snooper breaks out with a discovery that, if you read the last ten lines of “Love’s Labor Lost” backward, you will find that Marlowe really wrote it, but, day in and day out, the best we get from correspondents is problems, problems, problems and solutions, solutions, solutions.

  The English letter-writers seem to keep their heads better in a crisis. In all the confusion of war, revolution and financial collapse the tiny twippet has never been forgotten and controversy still rages over the methods of salting fish among the ancient Druids. If you think that I am letting my imagination run wild in these subjects, just glance over the controversial matter which agitated the readers of the London Sunday Times last month, a pretty hot month, as months go, in world affairs:

  A. M. Goodhart wrote in as follows, under the heading: “Hurtleberries.”

  “Sir: With reference to the hurtleberries, or windberries, the description quoted from Gwillim’s ‘Display of Heraldry’ 1638, ends thus:” (He then follows with a quotation from Gwillim, which puts an end to any monkey business on the other side.)

  Under the heading “Did the Greeks Have Cats?” we read the following from J. F. Clayton, of Clapton E.

  “Is there not an apparent reference to the domestic cat in the first book of Batrachomyomachia, where Psycarpex tells the Frog King about the various enemies by whom the noble race of mice are afflicted?” (I give you my word I am not making this up.)

  Mr. Clayton, of Clapton E. evidently has quite a lot of time on his hands, besides a deal of erudition, for in the same issue he also has a letter stating that “Mein Lieber August” dates back to 1799. Things can’t be very much upset in Clapton E.

  John A. Buckley, of East Wittering, Sussex, writes in to deplore the weed threat of Hickling Broad, and L. E. Steele wants to know, with considerable apprehension, if there is any foundation for the statement that Robert Bruce, Henry the Fourth of England and Louis the Fourteenth were lepers. C. R. Haines of Petersfield wants it distinctly understood that swifts do not fly faster than about sixty miles an hour and that a hobby can outfly and take them. He gives no proof, however.

  And so it goes, gold standard or no gold standard, twippets and merples’ eggs take first place. Can’t something be done to keep “Audax” and “Veritas” from fussing around with odds and ends of international crises and to make them settle down to something worth while writing-in about?

  (Signed)

  “AUDAX”

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  How to Travel

  in Peace

  The Uncommercial Traveler

  and His Problems

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  The conversational voltage in the smoking rooms of the trans-Atlantic greyhounds (ocean liners) is so high between June and September that it has been figured out (right here on this page) that if it were possible to harness this jaw motion, the engines could be shut down, and the boats run on talk-power. There is something in the sea air which seems to bring a sort of kelp to the surface even in the most reticent of passengers, and before the ship has passed Fire Island you will have heard as much dull talk as you would get at a dozen Kiwanis meetings at home. And the chances are that you, yourself, will have done nothing that you can be particularly proud of as a raconteur. They tell me that there is something that comes up from the bilge which makes people like that on shipboard.

  I myself solved the problem of shipboard conversation by traveling alone and pretending to be a deaf-mute. I recommend this ruse to other irritable souls.

  There is no sense in trying to effect it if you have the family along. There is no sense in trying to effect anything if you have the family along. But there is something about a family man which seems to attract prospective talkers. Either the Little Woman scrapes up acquaintances who have to have their chairs moved next to yours and tell you all about how rainy it was all spring in East Orange, or the children stop people on the deck and drag them up to you to have you show them how to make four squares out of six matches, and once you have established these contacts, you might as well stay in your stateroom for the rest of the voyage.

  It is agreed then that you must be a Lone Traveler if you hope to avoid having your good ear talked off. If, by any chance, you find yourself on board ship with the family, it is a very easy matter to take them up on the boat deck after dark and push them overboard under the pretext of having them peer over the side at the phosphorus. It is pitiful how unsuspectingly they will peer over the side to look at the phosphorus.

  Once you are alone, you can then start in on the deaf-mute game. When you go down to dinner, write out your order to the steward and pretty soon the rest of the people at your table will catch on to the fact that something is wrong. You can do a few pleasant passes of sign language if the thing seems to be getting over too slowly. As a matter of fact, once you have taken your seat without remarking on the condition of the ocean to your right-hand neighbor, you will have established yourself as sufficiently queer to be known as “that man at our table who can’t talk.” Then you probably will be left severely alone.

  Once you are out on deck, stand against the rail and look off at the horizon. This is an invitation which few ocean-talkers can resist. Once they see anyone who looks as if he wanted to be alone, they immediately are rarin’ to go. One of them will come up to you and look at the horizon with you for a minute, and then will say:

  “Isn’t that a porpoise off there?”

  If you are not very careful you will slip and say: “Where?” This is fatal. What you should do is turn and smile very sweetly and nod your head as if to say: “Don’t waste your time, neighbor. I can’t hear a word you say.” Of course, there is no porpoise and the man never thought there was; so he will immediately drop that subject and ask you if you are deaf. Here is where you may pull another boner. You may answer: “Yes, very.” That will get you
nowhere, for if he thinks that he can make you hear by shouting, he will shout. It doesn’t make any difference to him what he has to do to engage you in conversation. He will do it. He would spell words out to you with alphabet blocks if he thought he could get you to pay any attention to his story of why he left Dallas and what he is going to do when he gets to Paris.

  So keep your wits about you and be just the deafest man that ever stepped foot on a ship. Pretty soon he will get discouraged and will pass on to the next person he sees leaning over the rail and ask him if that isn’t a “porpoise ’way off there.” You will hear the poor sucker say, “Where?” and then the dam will break. As they walk off together you will hear them telling each other how many miles they get to a gallon and checking up on the comparative sizes of the big department stores in their respective towns.

  After a tour of the smoking-room and writing-room making deaf-and-dumb signs to the various stewards, you will have pretty well advertised yourself as a hopeless prospect conversationally. You may then do very much as you like.

  Perhaps not quite as you like. There may be one or two slight disadvantages to this plan. There may be one or two people on board to whom you want to speak. Suppose, for instance, that you are sitting at one of those chummy writing desks where you look right into the eyes of the person using the other half. And suppose that those eyes turn out to be something elegant; suppose they turn out to be very elegant indeed. What price being dumb then?

  Your first inclination, of course, is to lean across the top of the desk and say: “I beg your pardon, but is this your pen that I am using?” or even more exciting: “I beg your pardon, but is this your letter that I am writing?” Having been posing as a deaf-mute up until now, this recourse is denied you, and you will have to use some other artifice.