Chips Off the Old Benchley

by Robert Benchley

  After several weeks of this kind of training, he will be in fair shape to face what he has to face. If it is possible, he should stay in his retreat until it is time to build the fire, coming home on the day of the event. If this cannot be arranged, he should be most careful not to lose the good effect of his rest, and should refuse all invitations for the week previous. Above all, he should take no alcohol into his system. (An alternative to this prescription would be to take all the alcohol that he can get just before going down cellar, so that he is in a state of extreme intoxication during the procedure, thereby deadening the unpleasant features of what he has to do and lending a certain gaiety and enthusiasm to the affair which could not possibly be stimulated otherwise. The danger of this method is, of course, that he might become so interested and excited in what he was doing that he would set the house on fire, too.)

  At last the day comes. Kissing his family all around and leaving his papers and insurance documents where they can easily be found in case of the worst, he descends into the cellar. It is better to have no one accompany him to witness his shame, or to hear what he has to say. At times like these, a man should be alone with his own soul.

  There will be no kindling ready. This is a certainty. This means that he will have to break up some boxes. It will be found that these boxes, while seemingly constructed of wood like other boxes, are in reality made of a sort of marble composition which was originally put together to resist the blows of an axe. (In case there is no axe in the cellar, which is more than likely, the shaker to the furnace will do nicely. Place the box or board against the wall and strike it heavily with the iron shaker, saying, “"You ********!” at each blow. Your chances are at least even that it will not bounce under the blow and fly up and strike you in some vital spot. If it doesn’t do this, it may split.)

  After breaking up a sufficient number of sticks, you will take them over to the furnace. The furnace has been standing there all this time, laughing.

  A quantity of newspaper is necessary, and while crumpling it up preparatory to filling the bottom of the fire-box with it, you will probably discover several old funny sections which you have never seen before and will have to sit down and read over. This will rest you after the chopping and will take your mind off the furnace. If your wife inquires from the top of the cellar stairs how the fire is coming on, you can reply that you are waiting for it to catch.

  The papers once placed in the fire-box, the time has come to pile the sticks in on top of it. Now is also the time to discover that the sticks are too long and won’t fit. Back to the axe or the furnace-shaker and a little more fun, smashing and talking to yourself. And now for the big moment!

  Placing the wood on the paper, you apply the match. The first match. Follow thirty other matches. Then discover that the drafts aren’t open. A good joke on you, at which you laugh heartily.

  And now a merry blaze! Up goes the paper in a burst of flame and you feel that the job is about done. After all, not such a hard task, once the wood is split. You shut the door, in order to give the wood a better chance to catch, and hear the cheery roar as the flames rush up the flue. Gradually the roar dies down and you strain your ears to catch the sound of crackling wood. Now the roar is gone, but there is no crackle. Carefully you open the door, afraid to learn the worst, and there, in a nice, black fire-box, is your wood, safe and sound, with one or two pink wisps of paper glowing coyly underneath. The rest is silence.

  Pick the wood out carefully, piece by piece, and start again. Oh, the joy of starting again! Think of what it means, this glorious privilege which Nature gives us of making a fresh start after each one of our little failures! In with more paper! In with more wood! Now the match! And again the roar! Is it not splendid, Little Father? This time certain sections of the wood catch and flicker sadly.

  The wood started, we now come to the real test of the fire-builder. Sneak quietly to the bin and get a shovelful of coal. Stand with it by the door of the fire-box, behind which the wood is blazing. Quick! Open door! Quicker! In with the coal! Back for another shovelful! In with it! That’s right! It may look for a minute as if you were smothering the bright blaze with the black coal, but don’t waver. Another shovelful to cover the last tongue of flame from the burning wood. Hurrah! Hurrah! The fire is out!

  The next thing to do is go upstairs and telephone for Jimmie, the Italian who makes a business of starting furnace-fires and keeping them going throughout the winter. This requires no more practice than knowing how to use the telephone. And it is the only sure way of getting your furnace going.

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  Are You an Old Master?

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  What won’t they do with infra-red rays next? Or first – what have they done with infra-red rays? Or, better yet – what are infra-red rays? (Mercy me – is this man’s curiosity insatiable?)

  The latest thing that they have announced as being susceptible to infra-red ray treatment is fake painting. Take the Old Master, called “Old Woman With Dour Expression” that has been hanging around in your house for years, and treat it with infra-red rays, and you can tell whether or not it is a fake. If it is, just raise the merry dickens. If it isn’t, put it back on the wall and forget it again.

  What the infra-red rays do to a painting is to show what’s underneath. Lots of so-called old masters have been painted on top of other paintings, and probably lots of other paintings have been painted on top of old masters, although the idea is not a very pleasant one.

  How would you like to have an infra-red photograph taken of you in your immaculate evening clothes and, when the proofs are sent around, see that you were just a whited sepulcher, covered from head to foot with tattooings of serpents and the collier “Fleetwood,” with “From Annie to Phil” written across your collarbone? Not very much, I fancy!

  The old-fashioned X-ray was bad enough. That showed what things you had swallowed, in the line of trinkets and nails. It also disclosed any little oddments of armament that you might have in your pockets, and brought out your garters into pretty sharp relief.

  But now we have got to face inquiring photographers with infra-red cameras who want to see whether we are genuine old masters or not. That suit of long underwear that you sneak on when the weather gets cold, that electric health belt that you thought might throw a little more pep into your stride, those built-up shoulders that lend the military air to your carriage – all these will be an open book to the Paul Prys of science.

  There is one comfort. The infra-red people will take a long time to get around to us with their cameras. They aren’t interested in Poor Little You and Poor Little Me. We could go about painted a bright red underneath and nobody would ever know the difference, provided we lead the kind of lives we’re supposed to live.

  All the time I am reading of new discoveries of science: emanations from tinfoil which are going to show up subconscious thoughts, invisible smoke from silver nitrate which is going to revolutionize crime detection, rays from rotting apples which are going to make it possible to make anyone invisible except for his belt-buckle, and all kinds of awful disruptions of what I like to think of as my daily life.

  But they never seem to impinge on me in the end. I plod along unnoticed, and no scientist will even talk to me, much less work his miracles on me. I never even get an offer to pose for a hay-fever cure. I don’t expect ever to have an infra-red photographer so much as ask me to take my hat off.

  This is O.K. with me. I don’t want to be subjected to anything more than I am subjected to already. If I am not a genuine old master, I don’t even want to know about it. It’s too late to do anything about it now.

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  Bird Lore

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  I am not much of a boy for birds. They frighten me just a little. Out in the trees they are all right, as I seldom get up into a tree myself unless I am very nervous; but a bird at close range has got me completely cowed.

/>   So I was never one of those children who went in for bird-calls. A ruby-throated grosbeak sounded to me just about the same as an owl, and I was perfectly willing to let all the birds in the world chirp their throats off so long as they stayed out of my hair. “Live and let live” has always been my motto with birds.

  But out here in California where I am writing this, the birds go too far. Like the Native-Sons, they pride themselves on just being birds.

  “Boy, am I a bird!” they seem to be saying. “Just get a load of this!” And then they go into a long number like the two Dodge Sisters, who used to make vaudeville what it was in its declining days.

  Last night I had one of my most unpleasant experiences with birds – or, rather, with a bird. I am convinced that it was only one bird, for it was sitting on a bush just outside my window and there were no other birds about.

  I had decided to go to bed early and see how that would work, having tried everything else to catch up on my sleep, and had just put the light out when the thing began. The night was very still outside, and I was wishing that the old Sixth Avenue Elevated would rumble by just once, when a shrill warble sounded in the shrubbery below my window-sill.

  “Steady, Bob, old man!” I said to myself, as I leaped out of bed in a cold sweat. “It’s only a bird. Pull yourself together!”

  Reassured by these words of my own, I clambered back under the blankets (adv. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce) and listened. In a few seconds it came again, but an entirely different call.

  I would say that that bird gave off a noise of some sort every five seconds during the night and each one was different! Not just different in note, but in volume and personality. Once it would be a small bird with a high voice. “A thrush!” I said to myself. Then, in five seconds, it was a great big, burly bird with a long black beard. “An eagle!”

  I finally got up and put on the light. “This thing has got to be faced!” I said.

  So I went over to the window and leaned far out into the bushes. Collecting all the breath that I could muster, I gave a terrific whistle between my teeth and lips. It was a corker.

  “If you want to whistle, whistle that!” I fairly screamed. And back at me came my whistle, only just a bit louder.

  I think that I must have fainted, for, when I woke, the sun (adv. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce) was streaming through the window and I was alone. The Bird to End All Birds had flown.

  I am moving today to the top floor of the tallest hotel in town, and to an inside room. From now on, if any birds want to work out on me, they will have to ask at the desk downstairs.

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  The United States

  Senate Chamber

  How M. T. Cicero Would Fare at the Hands of Our Senators at Washington

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  Theatrical seasons may vary in quality from year to year.

  But there is one organization which always runs true to form, regardless of changes in the cast or revisions in the book. Why withhold its name any longer simply to heighten the rhetorical suspense?

  In so many words, I refer to the Congress of the United States.

  Yes, you can always find something merry going on in the dual bill at the National Capital. In the House – for lovers of the big, noisy type of extravaganza, with smoking allowed in the first twenty-five rows; and in the Senate – for those who like their comedy neat, and produced in an intimate, fratty style by a small cast of consistent comedians.

  To one who is steeped in the classic, – as is the average business man of today, – there can not help but arise the question of whether or not the ancient Roman Senate was better, or worse than our own. And, once this question has arisen in one’s mind, it is impossible to down it. I have known men of affairs, busy captains (and first lieutenants) of industry, who have gone about, day after day, muttering to themselves, “I wonder if the Roman Senators were anything like as funny as the bunch at Washington?” until they were mere shadows of their former selves.

  This question is, therefore, a very vital one at this time, so vital that I feel justified in devoting a fair amount of space to it. I shall try to work up a little nugget of satire in this article, and show, in a vivid manner, just what chance an ancient Roman orator would stand if he started in to deliver one of his classic speeches in the Senate chamber at Washington – in the face of its daily program.

  I can think of no safer Roman orator to pick out, for this experiment, than old Dr. Cicero, and no more fitting speech than his little heart-to-heart talk in favor of the proposed Manilian Law, which, as we all remember – by referring to the encyclopedia volume entitled “Cal to Cle” – was a bit of legislation designed to make Lieut. Col. Pompey a Generalissimo and speed up the war program against Mithridatic Kultur.

  To continue, then, in the rowdy manner of that leading American funny paper, the Congressional Record:

  MR. CICERO

  Thus, O Romans, you perceive what the case is. Now, consider what you ought to do. It seems to me that I ought to speak, in the first place, of the sort (kind of) of war that exists; in the second place, of its importance, and lastly, of the selection of a general. It is –

  MR. BLEVITCH

  Mr. President –

  THE PRESIDING OFFICER

  Does the Senator from Rome yield to the Senator from Nebraska?

  MR. CICERO

  Sure.

  MR. BLEVITCH

  I should like to ask the Senator, simply for my own information, if he is referring to the present war, or to the Second Punic War.

  MR. CICERO

  I was going on to explain, although I thought that I had made myself clear on that point. The kind of war in which we are now engaged is such as ought, above all others, to incite your minds to a determination to persevere in it. It is a war in which the glory of the Roman people is at stake. It is –

  MR. GISH

  Mr. President –

  THE PRESIDING OFFICER

  Does the Senator from Rome yield to the Senator from North Dakota?

  MR. CICERO

  You’ve said it.

  MR. GISH

  The learned Senator from Rome has said that this is a war in which the glory of the Roman people is at stake. I agree with him heartily. But I question the advisability of making such a statement at the present time. Will it not create a feeling of despondency in the public mind to say that our glory is in such desperate straits as to be “at stake”? Would it not be better to say that our glory is “directly concerned” or “certainly a factor”? This is no time for hysteria.

  MR. CICERO

  I do not agree with the Senator, but I thank him for his suggestion.

  MR. GISH

  I need not assure the competent Senator from Rome that I thank him for thanking me for my suggestion.

  MR. CICERO

  Certainly not. . . . If I may be permitted, however, I will continue. It is a war in which the glory of the Roman people is, to say the least, one of the things to be considered. Our glory has been handed down to you from your ancestors, great indeed in everything, but most especially in military affairs. It is –

  MR. WEENIX

  Mr. President –

  THE PRESIDING OFFICER

  Does the Senator from Rome yield to the Senator from Massachusetts?

  MR. CICERO

  Go to it, Senator.

  MR. WEENIX

  As the witty Senator has just said, or should have said, it is indeed gratifying that party lines have been, so to speak, cast aside in this debate. In all my years in the Senate I have never seen such absence of partisan feeling. But I would like to ask the Senator from Rome, since he has seen fit to take up the cudgel in defense of the Administration, by referring to military affairs, if he can explain the shortage of war-chariots of the so-called “Victoria” type, which I am informed, exists to a shocking degree in our national equipment today. I base my information on a clipping from the Utica (N. Y.) “Union-Standard-News
-Republican,” which states that, whereas the present situation calls for 4,000,000 Victoria chariots, we have produced, so far as the “Union-Standard-News-Republican” can find out, just seven chariots of this type. This is no time for lulling the people into a sense of false security. I –

  MR. McNEE

  I should like to ask the intelligent Senator if he will explain to the Senate the difference between the so-called “Victoria” type of chariot and the “surrey” type, of which we hear so much.

  MR. WEENIX

  I am not a technical man myself, but this is the way I understand it. A “surrey” chariot has the whip-socket on the right hand side of the dash-board, while the “Victoria” –

  MR. WINTERHALTER

  If I may be allowed to correct the intuitive Senator, the difference between the two types of chariots, according to the best information which I can get from several of my constituents who are in the chariot business, is that the “Victoria” chariot is a little worse than the “surrey” chariot, but that both are decidedly inferior to that made by the Appian Way Chariot & General Vehicle Co. This model (so my informant tells me, and he is a member of that firm and ought to know) was turned down by the Government at the beginning of the war, simply because it was found that the wheels would not stay on, – a fault which could have been remedied in a very short time. In a crisis like this, when, as the distinguished Senator has so well said, the very glory of the Roman people is at stake, it seems disgraceful, nay more, it seems too bad, that this great country of ours should give itself over to a commercialism in which a perfectly loyal chariot manufacturer is not given a chance to get a government contract when he comes all the way on to Washington to arrange for it. Why, I could tell you of instances –