Читать книгу Short Circuits - Stephen Leacock - Страница 23

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I want to tell about the Get-Together Movement we've been carrying on in our town, because I think it will be a help to people to get together in other towns.

The way it began was this. For some time past some of us had been feeling that we didn't get together enough. Whether it was from lack of opportunity or from lack of initiative, I don't know. But the fact was that we weren't getting together. So some of us began to think of how we could manage to get together better.

So the idea came up that a good way to start a movement in that direction would be to hold a lunch as a start. We thought if we could get together at a lunch it might serve as a beginning. So we began with a lunch.

Or rather, I should say that before we had the lunch a few of us got together at breakfast to work up the lunch. I don't know whose idea it first was, but at any rate a little group of us went and had breakfast at one of the hotels. We just had a plain breakfast--just cereals and grapefruit and eggs and bacon and a choice of steak--in fact, just the things they either had on the bill of fare or could get on half an hour's notice. It was quite informal. We put one of ourselves in the chair, as president, and had no speeches or anything of the sort except that the president said a few words, mainly about getting together and one or two about how the other men just added a word or two about how we hadn't been getting together in the past and hoping that in the future things would be different and we would get together.

It was felt at the same time that the purpose of the club should be service, and it was decided that a good form of service would be to eat lunch.

So the lunch came off soon after and was an unqualified success in every way. The president explained the aim of the organization, and a simple outline of a constitution was drawn up. For the use of others I append here the two or three principal clauses:

Aim of the organization--To get together.

Means to be taken to accomplish it--By coming together.

Purpose of the organization--Service.

Means of effecting it--By cultivating in the members a sense of service.

Politics of the organization--None.

Religion of the members--None.

Ideas represented--None.

Education and other tests for membership--None.

Fees, outside of food--Nothing.

The constitution was voted with a great deal of enthusiasm. When the lunch broke up, it was felt that a real start had been made.

Well, having the lunch encouraged us to go right on, and so the next thing we had was a dinner. There was a feeling that you can get men together at a dinner where they sit together in a way in which you can't unless you do.

Of course, it took a good deal of work to get the dinner, a lot of spade work and team work. It's always that way. But at last we got over a hundred pledged to eat dinner and ventured to pull it off.

It certainly was a big success. It was quite informal. We just held it in one of the big hotels, taking the ordinary table d'hôte dinner that the hotel served that night and letting the members just come in and sit down and start eating when they liked and get up and leave just when they wanted to.

There were no speeches--just the president and one or two gave ten minutes' talk on service and community feeling. The president said that the way to get these was by getting together: he said that we had already done a lot just by sheer ground work and he wanted us all to hang right on and stick to it and see it through.

Well, since then we've been keeping the lunches and dinners going pretty regularly. And as a result we feel that we are beginning to know one another. I sat next to a man the other night whom I don't suppose I would have ever got to know if I hadn't sat next to him. We both remarked upon it. In fact, I don't think there's any better way to get next to a man than by sitting next to him when he's eating. You get a community feeling out of it. This man--I forget his name--said so too.

But we've cut out the local speakers. Somehow our members don't care to listen to one another. They all seem to feel that you get more community feeling, a far better sense of genuine fellowship, from an outsider. So we take our speakers now from a good way off.

And we've certainly had some wonderful talks. One of the first--I think the man was a professor--was a great talk; it was on "How to Be 100 Per Cent Yourself"; and there was another on "How to Get 100 Per Cent Outside Yourself"; and others on "How to Think 100 Per Cent" and on "How to Be 100 Per Cent Awake."

There's no doubt the organization has done a whole lot towards bringing us all together. When the members meet on the street, they always say, "Good morning!" or "How are you?" or something of that sort, or even stop for a second and say, "Well, how's it going?" or "How's the boy?"

In fact, you can generally tell the members of our organization on the street just by the look on their faces. I heard a man say the other day that he'd know them a mile off.

So what we feel is that there must be men of the same stamp as ourselves in other towns. We ought to know them and they ought to know us. Let's start something to get together.