Читать книгу Short Circuits - Stephen Leacock - Страница 11

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Isn't it funny how different people and things are when you know them from what you think they are when you don't know them?

For instance, everybody knows how much all distinguished people differ in their private lives from what they appear to the public. We all get used to being told in the papers such things as that in his private life Signor Mussolini is the very gentlest of men, spending his time by preference among children and dolls; that in his private life Dean Inge, the "gloomy Dean" of St. Paul's Cathedral, is hilariously merry; and that Mr. Chesterton, fat though he appears in public, is in private life quite thin.

I myself had the pleasure not long ago of meeting the famous Mr. Sandpile, at that time reputed to be the most powerful man in America, and giving public exhibitions of muscular strength of a most amazing character. I was surprised to find that in his private life Sandpile was not a strong man at all, but quite feeble. "Would you mind," he said to me, "handing me that jug? It's too heavy for me to lift."

In the same way, I recall on one occasion walking down a street in an English seaport town late one night with Admiral Beatty--I think it was Admiral Beatty, either Beatty or Jellicoe. "Would you mind," he said, "letting me walk behind you? I'm afraid of the dark." "You mean of course," I said, "only in your private life." "Certainly," he answered. "I don't mind it a damn in daylight."

Few people know that Mr. Henry Ford cannot drive a motor car, that Mr. Rockefeller never has any money, and that Thomas Edison has never been able to knit.

But lately I have been noticing that these contradictions extend also to institutions and things in general. Take for instance, a circus. In past generations it was supposed by many of the best supposers that circus people were about as tough an "aggregation" as it was possible to aggredge. But not at all. Quite the other way.

Not long ago a circus came to our town and I had the pleasure of spending some time with one of the clowns--he was studying for a Ph.D. in private life--and of getting a good deal of information from him as to what a modern circus is like when seen from the inside.

I expressed my astonishment that he should be a clown and also a Philosophy student. "Not at all," he said, "there's nothing unusual about that. As a matter of fact, four of our clowns are in philosophy, and the ringmaster himself is studying palæontology, though he is still some distance from it. Nearly all our clowns are college men: they seem specially fitted for it somehow.

"And most of our trapeze ladies are college girls. You can tell a college girl on a trapeze at any time. You must come over and see us," he added, "we are having a little sort of gathering on Sunday afternoon--one of our Fortnightly Teas. We generally have a little reading and discussions. We take up some author or period and some one reads a paper on it. This afternoon we are to discuss the Italian Renaissance and the bandmaster is to deal with Benvenuto Cellini.

"We have a welfare Society, and a Luncheon Club, and our Big Sister Movement. As to drunkenness," he added, "the other day some one brought in a bottle of Ontario four per cent beer and our manager was terribly distressed about it. He gave it to the kangaroo."

It seems impossible to doubt the truth of his words, especially when we corroborate them with similar disclosures about other institutions.

Take, for example, some information which I recently received in regard to cowboys from a man who had just made a tour in the West.

"You are quite mistaken," he told me, "in imagining that the western cowboy is the kind of 'bad man,' all dressed up in leather fringes, that you read about in the half-dime novels. As a matter of fact, most of the cowboys nowadays are college men. There seems to be something in a college training which fits a man for cattle.

"They are principally law students. Few of the cowboys of today undertake to ride, for of course they don't need to. They mostly use cars in going after the cattle, and many of them, for that matter, can't drive a car. They have chauffeurs. And in any case, the cattle of today are very quiet and seldom move faster than a walk or a run.

"The cowboy has naturally long since discarded his peculiar dress and wears just a plain lounge suit with a thin duster and motor goggles. Of course, they change for dinner at night, especially when invited out to dine with the Indians, or at one of the section men's clubs beside the railway track. But you ought to go out and see them for yourself."

I admitted that I ought.

Meantime I notice the same kind of contradiction in another set of institutions, but this time turned the other way around. I'll give as an example of it the newspaper account of the entertainment (it is an annual affair) that was given in our town the other night under the auspices of the Girls' Uplift Society in aid of the Rescue Fund for Sunken Delinquents.

"The Revue put on last week by the Girls' Uplift Society in the Basement of the Seventh Avenue Social Center certainly outclassed any of the previous performances of the Society. The chorus dancing of the Rescue Squad was pronounced worthy of the Midnight Follies of the metropolis itself, and the pastor in his remarks spoke especially of the trapeze work of the Mothers' Aid.

"The pastor drew attention, however, to the fact that this year more than ever there had been complaints about the young ladies bringing flasks to their dressing rooms. He himself--he admitted it reluctantly--had not seen any of these flasks and could not speak of the contents. But the janitor had picked up twenty-six. He himself, however, had looked all round the basement, but had failed to find any.

"He deplored also the increasing prevalence of smoking at the performances. He himself saw no harm in a good cigar, for himself, especially in a well-seasoned twenty-five-cent dark Habanana, which he said beat Virgyptian tobacco hands down. But he looked on a cigarette as a mighty poor smoke."

When we add to the disclosures of this sort such minor and obvious facts as that nowadays sailors can't swim, and clergymen swear, and brewers don't drink, and actors can't act--we have to admit that we live in a changing world.