Part 4 (2/2)
Sunday: To the zoo this afternoon, just to see how the anied his cage resoundingly from time to time; the racoon and the skunk had retired for the winter; the foxes looked as though the ceave them cold feet But the ducks were very hearty, and nipped at the toes ofat one's boot is a good joke, but a duck nipping at one's nether regions when one is in a bathing suit is so -- a process which is chronic with thee and a glorious sight Tls had been added to the collection, and were resenting it; I know of no anie equal to that of an owl
Monday: A correspondence school has written to ; this is a type of criticisenius to become a successful writer,” they say, in what is ebelow the surface of your home town,” they say; frankly I a inco friends,” as they promise, but merely a pack of lawsuitsPeople who have taken the course write eagerly, ”Last week I hit The Country Gentleman; this week I hit Mademoiselle; next week I hope to hit the American Mother!” Frankly I don't think this course would suit ht toss a pie at the American Mother, just for funBut I like the promise the people make that they will teach me how to create tense s; I have never been any good at either of those things And I particularly like their offer to teach me how to be funny; any school which can make a man funny by correspondence must possess a secret which has been hidden froenerations It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, noouldn't it?
Tuesday: Walked ho nu in low, tense voices as they leaned over bicycles or huddled under trees Poets insist that Spring is the ti, but personal observation convinces hts of late Autu about these lovers' conversations are the pauses The lad asks sonificance, and the girl then casts down her eyes, fingers her Latin Graitatedwhich I try to keep on walking without getting out of earshot) replies ”Oh, I guess so,” or ”Oh, I just as leave,” causing her swain to breathe hard and gulpWhy doesn't he throw hi, ”You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors”; then she could reply, ”Nay, press me not, I am Another's” In that way they could really have sorandchildren No style, no breadth, that's the trouble with the h School set
Wednesday: An unseasonable warm spell forcesthe thing to giveit to relax its efforts Perverse as always, it huffs and puffs and frizzles ot a load of wood, with not more than a fair amount of soft stuff, punk and limbs in it, and I shall conduct Marchbanks' Annual Wood Bee on Saturday Hard cider and doughnuts will be served to all helpers
Thursday: Was talking to a woman who has just had a baby, and who passed her period of recovery in a public ward in a Great Canadian City There were nine other women in the room with her, and she said that they talked all the time -- mostly about names for babies and the peculiar behaviour of their husbands When these husbands caue was invariable: HUSBAND: ”Do you want anything to read?”
WIFE: (patting her bedside table) ”No, no; I have MY BOOK
My informant was burned up with curiosity to knohat these books hich were spoken of in such a portentous manner; she was able to discover that in all nine cases the ”book” was a azine of true love stories, or of confessions This is an interesting sidelight on Canadian reading habits Furthermore, she said that she never saw one of her nine companions open her ”book” upon any occasionMy infor her recovery, to the anation of her roon of being stuck-up, and furtheric, I suppose
Friday: My brother Fairchild isof an unusual nature going on in Fairchild's vicinity, I kept a close watch on hi himself with a little electric machine which he kept in a leather case It was, he said, a razor, and not a ht; held close to the face, it chewed the whiskers off with tiny teeth; he passed it over the rugosities of his countenance with a great air of virtuosity, and I must admit that the little machine seemed to work I asked him if it did not excite his face too much to have electricity applied to it? Was there no tendency for the skin to loosen and hang in folds? He denied this with more heat than was really necessary, for my question was purely academic Later I crept off to the bathroom and cut myself with a razor I have used for years; I have a fear of new-fangled contrivances Fairchild is the daring member of the family
Saturday: This afternoon hove wood intowas a wild, brutal ecstasy, but the piling was a weary penance It was necessary for rab up as much wood as I could hold, and scuttle under the rafters and furnace-pipes in a crouching position, rather as an ape rushes through the forest with a stolen bunch of bananas After an hour or two of this an to hurt, and my philosophy took a violent turn toward pessian to slip and slide, and drop on ot it to stay in place, and decided not to te any more on it, so I retired to an upstairs roolass of burdock blood-bittersDuring the night a mouse tramped rather heavily on the cellar floor, and I heard a thunderous roll as my woodpile sank into ruin
- XLV -
Sunday: Woke with an aching head and a vile taste inwood yesterday; the pursuit of pleasure always leaves me in splendid condition (a fact which puzzles and irritates the Moral Eleives overs Obviously Nature is evolving a new type of eared for a life of pleasure, and I am the first ” I went out and heaved and piled the rest ofreconstructed the woodpile which fell down yesterday By the tie of physical and e theularly, and even develop a taste for it, there is no doubt in my mind (and that of scientists whoerous and destructive drug, and should be called by its right naue
Monday: Attended a concert in a collegiate auditoriuht, and sat in the front row in order to have rooned by and for dwarfs) I have to sit side-saddle, while nu in the front row I had a fine view of the e a rowdy rendition of Chopin's Scherzo in B Minor a tiny an to dance, lightly, elegantly and charly When the music twiddled, the mouse twiddled; when the music bounced, the mouse bounced; there was no arabesque of sound which the mouse was not able to transmute into an arabesque of orously, assue of the Board of Education I learned later, however, that the concert coot in, somehoithout a ticketWhy are school mice always so fat and sleek? Is it because they have access to unlirubby joylessness about life these days which oppresses the spirit As I look out ofplant to be seen; dust blows everywhere; a wo at her arm is a little boy dressed in a snow suit, in which he is hot and fretful; a h all his irl goes by wearing an elaborate hairdo, a pea-jacket and a pair of short slacks, froeon-toed, but she holds her head proudly; an elderly woh her mouth and stares at the passers-by Is there any hope in these people? Could i soh the eyes, or in a smile? November is awart-cures with a physician this evening He says that in his experience the best one is this: rub the ith a slice of bacon, then go outdoors on a night when the moon is full, throw the bacon over your left shoulder and then, as the bacon rots, the ill vanish ”But what if a cat eats the bacon?” I asked; ”The ill vanish that ic, and a lady present spoke of an old worandmother, whose custom it hen her luck was bad) to bind her churn -withes, and beat it with a stick; then whoever it was that ishi+ng her ill would coiveness This was in Canada, about 1850-60 Our pioneer ancestors had a lot of simple fun that we miss
Thursday: Life, for adomestic problems Shall I have my storm-s put on, or not? At present the weather is warmer than it was orous repression of my furnace that I keep my house livable But I know that Winter will co its raw breath through every chink, ruffling the carpets on the floors and whipping the pictures off the walls God pity all the poor souls on a night like that! And then I shall not be able to get anyone to creep up a ladder in the icy blast, bearing 15 square feet of glass in his arer? My indecision will be the ruin of me, I know it But oh, the heat of storm s in eather! I willI won'tI willI WON'T Come then, Boreas, and be damned! It is better to tarry than to burn
Friday: Waiting for a bus today, I listened to the conversation of to symptoms Such tales of nervous breakdown, bad dreas, bladder weakness and general debility I have never heard: although they stood side by side they shouted as though they were conversing in a hurricane, and as their syrew louder and shriller They talked so loudly that I had no need ofTo lu more than a chance to rehearse their ailments In some dark corner of their minds (I use the word loosely) there lurks the notion that if they ever admit that they feel quite well the Gods will at once punish them with some direful malady
Saturday: Rain all day What can a man do on a rainy day which is also his half-holiday? I am never at a loss for an answer to that question Immediately after lunch, I went to bed, and bade farewell to the world for a few hours The telephone rang ”It can't be anyone of any consequence,” I thought: ”every saneceasedLater there was a knock at the door ”nobody is up to any good this afternoon,” I said toto sell me a ticket on a sanctified raffle, or a dozen repulsive Christmas cards, or a copy of the Christmas War Whoop, or a pillow stuffed with pine needles -- A pox upon them” The knocker went away”If everybody spent one half-day in bed,” I reflected, ”there would be no need of a United Nations Organization; world peace would come as a matter of course, the divorce rate would be cut in two, and even griht and spirit” At this point Oblivion claih a book today which had a good deal to say about prayer as a , and could be indulged in anywhere; pray on the bus, while eating your dinner, or while taking a bath, it said; it was particularly scornful of the notion that prayer should be done on the knees;in bedNow this lects the function of prayer as physical exercise Most people, if they don't kneel to pray, never kneel at all, and kneeling is good for you The Moslems understand the value of prayer as exercise, and several times a day they prostrate themselves with their heads toward Mecca; I once knew a Mosleood physical trireat point of the kotow, in which you kneel gracefully and touch your forehead to the ground when in the presence of your superiors, or in temples; this kept them admirably supple and healthy, and when the revolution put an end to the kotow the Chinese went straight to the bad The present decline of Christianityin bed, which is bad for the Christian liver
Monday: A doctor tells me that he has observed a nued woular attendants at Bingo gae quantities of the corn which is used for counters; then they go hoins Sometimes he says, it is si a set of celluloid Bingo counters, but often the disease has gone too far for anything but severe measures He mentioned one patient of his (whom he referred to as a White Wyandotte type) whose wattles had turned greyish and whose eyes had filo corn Another woman he mentioned (a table Plymouth Rock) showed every sy pitiful squawks and occasionally falling over on her side Still another was far gone in fowl-convulsions, and he did not think she would last for the Christ out the sturdy character which the Scots built on a diet of oats; he said that he was afraid that Bingo corn would turn Canada into a nation of sick hens
Tuesday: The Russians are acclaienius -- a sort of primeval, pre-Marx Co Burns's works complete His dislike of aristocracy pleases them, no doubt, but his hatred of orthodoxy and bureaucracy cannot go down very well Probably the Russian editions of his works are carefully expurgated, and such verses as The De'il's Awa Wi' The Exciseman are oive thanks that Burns is dead, and not alive in Russia today He would be a great bother to the coht
Wednesday: Was introduced to an elderly lady today who offered ers to shake; they were cold, daes Her conduct in this reatly, for I would much have preferred to have no hand at all, rather than half a hand It was the custoers -- three, two, or in extrearded as socal inferiors, or in some way undesirable I only know one man who still does it, and as he does it to everybody I assuard for himself The story is told that the late Arthur Balfour once offered a er to shake, and the ree that Balfour was unable to write for a week Moderation in the handshake is highly desirable; neither the blacksrip, which crushes the hand into the seer, nor the chilly extension of two or three fingers I think handshaking is overdone, in any case; why do we not co hands with ourselves, like Chinamen, or boxers who have won a iving out strange squeaks and groans, as though she had nosed her trouble; her corsets were creaking, and whenever shewere audible This reminded me of one of my earliest business ventures, when I patented and atteuent which was rubbed well into the corsets before putting the their repressive powers I was unlucky in the time I chose to marketinto fashi+on, and the heavier corset of canvas, steel, whalebone and leather thongs was falling into disuse But there are still a feo one of the big cosain
Friday: Was talking to a young woman today who informed me that she had no soul I think she hoped to shock me by this declaration, but it was old stuff to s and cynical old things who think they have no souls They appear to regard the soul as a part of their personalities upon which the Christian Church has established squatters' rights, and they very properly resent such intrusion As to defining the soul, they never atteard it as a sort of vapour floating about the heart -- not unlike gas on the stomach For a belief in the soul, and the deity of which the soul is a reflection, they substitute belief in such chile Tax, cold baths, colonic irrigation, free love, woetarianism, the Century of the Common Man, the infallibility of TV coeners and equivalents As a result, their souls become anaemic and debilitated, and their faces have the unlit look of vacant houses
Saturday: Passed the day very agreeably laughing, pattingtoasts to myself The reason for my satisfaction was that I was co the Santa Claus Parade As I grow older, and the Christins earlier and earlier, my relish for Christmas dwindles The spirit of love and friendshi+p which should fill us all at Christifts which I don't want, vulgarized Christmas carols, hysterical appeals from the Post Office for mercy, ill-considered entertainments from which the real spirit of Christmas is painfully absent, and a co Santa Claus, now utterly divorced fro ive them to people who don't like thearden, hed and sang the hours away, precisely as though Santa, the patron of the Cha triumphal entry into the Ontario Babylon
- XLVII -
Sunday: I of some attic closets so faced the task with a heavy heart Under the debris of the years discovered an astonishi+ng quantity of old wallpaper I have never seen an attic yet which did not contain a lot of old wallpaper, and this er doesn't feel safe unless he has a lot more material than he really needs I learned how to calculate the amount of paper needed for a rooe of the walls by the cubic contents of the floor and ceiling combined, and double it; you then allow half the total for openings such as s and doors; then you allow the other half for ain to give a in for error, and then you order the paper Result: every attic contains enough extra wallpaper to print a complete Sunday edition of the New York Times
Monday: Peeped nervously from behind my lace curtains today to see if the Offal Officer would really take away all the assorted junk which I banished from my attic yesterday; he did, and he even wore some of it as he drove down the streetChriste to every man to buy presents for people whose taste he does not know, or who have no discernible taste of any kind I buy a few Christ full well that they will not be enough for my needs The Christmas spirit has not yet taken possession of me
Tuesday: In the course of a conversation about drinks this evening, a oes into the ara Peninsula, he says, is a season of Bacchic revel and riot; the ara farmers and their plump, rosy-cheeked wives roll up their blue jeans and tread out the grapes in an elaborate ritual dance, singing this song the while: Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io!
And hurrah for the Chair As we dance in a ring, Banishi+ng our troubles With gulps of gas and bubbles!
Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io!
And hurrah for the Chairht falls, they all drape exquisite garlands of flowers about the priapic statues of the Chairman of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario which stand in every vineyard, and then depart into the woods in pairs It is very dangerous to follow theo today I was in a h toto do so I still press hard on the dashboard of any car I as to the driver under e and scrunch whenever another car co distance For peace of ine, and so on the back seat, and besides it gives people in other cars a wrong impression
Thursday: To Toronto, the Ontario Babylon, on business Passed hastily through Toyland and saw children being introduced to Santa Claus Two or three harassedthe tots away froe back into the crohence they had co the queue This is an instinct deep in the childish heart What does Oerly frequent A Santa Claus to Toyland yearly sent -- Then turned, and vainly tried to butt my way Outward by the sah to pull children and a few adults Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with ht excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as the Beatles send the bobby-sockers Whoo! it went, ly: Whoo! Whoo!
Friday: Toronto is already in the toils of Christmas, and from several s the hollow Ho Ho! of a mechanical Santa Claus may be heard Children watch these creatures with hard calculating eyes, wondering if the oldto be, like Ha on, but they all seeiants and Disney oddities abounded, and there were a few angels, but even they had been Disneyized, and made cute, rather than spiritual A Man froious festival from what he sees here Is it the final triuin of Christnore it?
Saturday: Dashed out this et soreeting-card type, but at Christreatdepictions of jolly doggies hanging up their stockings, or pretty pussies doing the sa; several cards were in what is called ”the seures and postures strongly recalling the kewpies who used to appear in the advertisements of a famous tomato soup St Nicholas, too, appeared onhis bulbous nose In short, everything possible had been done to rob Christnificance It was not in this spirit that dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, and it is not in this spirit that I, personally, shall celebrate Christar infantilis as there is breath in , reading dispersedly in several favourite books, and er nothing would have persuaded me to confess that I used such an article, but one of the joys of increasing age is that one loses much of one's shahtfully s the Shunammite, and every Sunday School child will knohy; infidels s, chapter one, verses one to four A Dece Louis XIV, I once read, possessed 413 splendid beds, but I doubt if he got any more pleasure from them than I from my one humble but convenient couch The only vexation that can assail me here is that the covers may be tucked in at the bottom in such a way that they do not reach my chin at the top But a few spirited kicks soon correct that, and I am in my Earthly Paradise with A the S
Monday: This Christ situations Decided today to get a bottle of toilet water fordisplay of unguents, balms, lotions, electuaries and the like Asked for a bottle of scent, and a young woht out two or three, and poured drops from them on her wrist and arm Then to my horror she invited me to sniff them! I did so, tentatively She rippled herwoman, have you any idea where this may lead?” I cried, but she smiled in an obliqueabout perfuree that I scorched a handkerchief in es, she soldat four dollars a quarter ounce, which I fear Aunt Lettice will have to wear in the privacy of her own cha room with it on she would i attentions, and ht have to make a run for shelter I really wanted some lavender water, but this stuff is called Tres Ooouaranteed to rouse the dead
Tuesday: Addressed Christht There was a time when I used to hunt for the most suitable card for everyone on my list I chose cards covered with lambs and reindeer for children, snow-scenes for friends intering in Florida, High Church cards for friends of a ritualistic tendency, Low Church cards for evangelicals, Thick Church cards for those whose religion impressed lishmen on them for my jolly drunken Aave it up long ago Now I buy e inexpensive bundles, and send them out in whatever order they happen to co cards this year to people who sent ot last year, and ill not send oes on for decades, and there see itOn several cards I putsoon,” which is a lie I have no intention of writing them, but in an excess of Christmas spirit I pretend that serious illness, or the press of affairs, is the only thing which keepsletter every week
Wednesday: Was driving with a motorist today who nearly ran down several pedestrians who persisted in crossing streets against the traffic lights; he thought they did it on purpose, and I really think they were trying to commit suicide; some had a hopeless O-God-let-rin of idiocy It seems to me that when people dearly want to die, ed to assist theraphy that a properly licensed dog has the salad that citizens do not exercise their rights as freely as dogs do, howeverNot long ago a clergy he had with hi but dogs? No wars, no racial discrimination, all friends” Was so stunned by this idea that I said ”Yes, indeed” before I knehat I was about Hurried home and washedtalk with an insurance man today, and was fascinated by the skill hich he avoided talking about ame we played between us We never admitted for a moment that I was mortal, and would soler Lewis Instead we tried i what the world would be like if I, purely as a joke, withdrew fro pink cloud When it was impossible to avoid the nastyfor a moment that you are Out of The Picture, Mr Marchbanks” and then ould both sh such a supposition