Читать книгу Short Circuits - Stephen Leacock - Страница 7

Table of Contents

I was at a dinner party the other night at which one of the guests, as guests generally do, began to tell an old story of his, already known to us all.

"What you say of India," he said, "reminds me of a rather remarkable experience of mine in California--"

"Oh, James," interrupted his wife, "please don't tell that old story over again."

The narrator, a modest man, blushed and came to a stop. There was a painful silence which lasted for some moments. Then somebody said, "Speaking of Mayor Thompson of Chicago--" and the party went on again.

*****

But the incident left behind it a problem in my mind. Should a wife, or should a wife not, interrupt her husband to stop him telling one of his wearisome old stories. . . .

If the husband could speak (most husbands are inarticulate) he could certainly put up a good defense. He could say:

"My dear Martha, you think this is an old story. But if you knew some of the ones that will be told by the other men if I don't tell this, you'd think it brand new. You think the story wearisome for you. But their wives think their stories wearisome for them. All the stories we are all going to tell tonight are old. Of course they are. What do you think we are,--Shakespeare? We can't sit here and make up new stories. If we could, we'd black our faces, call ourselves coons and draw a hundred dollars a night in a New York Revue.

"Moreover--listen to this as a second point. An old story has certain great advantages over a new one. There's no strain in listening to it. You know just when it is all coming, and you can slip in an extra oyster and bite off an extra piece of celery in between the sentences, take a drink of dry ginger ale and be all set for the big laugh at the end.

"And get this also--if you don't have stories at a dinner table somebody will start Statistics. And Statistics are worse than stories in the ratio of eight to one. There is, you must remember, a certain type of man, who goes round filling himself up with facts. He knows how many miles of railway track there are in the United States and the number of illiterates in Oklahoma. At any dinner party this man may be there: if he is, conversation turns into a lecture. Worse still there may be two of these men. If there are, conversation becomes an argument."

*****

Now, this is the worst of all. Argument at a dinner party ruins the whole evening for everybody. One man says something,--let us say,--about the Civil War,--and some one else contradicts him.--"You'll pardon me--" he says, and they're off. They start politely. In two minutes they are speaking with warmth. In four minutes they hate one another worse than hell. First they ask themselves to pardon one another. Then they begin referring one another to books.--"Pardon me," says one, "if you consult any history of the war, you'll see that Lincoln never meant to set free the slaves."--"Excuse me," says the other, "if you consult any biography of Lincoln you'll see that he did. . . ."

Now you notice that this point about Abraham Lincoln can't be settled without at least a year's work in a library--and not even then.

So the argument gets warmer. The opponents refer one another to books, then they tell one another to go to Washington and hunt it up for themselves. Finally they tell one another to go to hell.

Meantime there is a maid behind one of them trying to give him a creamed celery out of a dish which he keeps knocking over, and a maid pouring hot asparagus with drawn butter over the other one's shirt front.

And the dinner party is a failure. Those two men will carry their quarrel right on after the men are left alone; they'll fetch it up to the library, they'll keep it all through bridge and take it home with them.

Think how much softer and easier if some one had said, "Talking about California, reminds me of an episode in India." . . . How quietly the asparagus would have circulated then.

*****

And there is more to it than that. There is, it seems to me, a sort of humble pathos surrounding the gentle story teller wanting to get his little anecdote in, and generally having to try several times for an opening.

He begins among the oysters.

"Speaking of India--" he says. But a wave of general conversation washes over him.

Somewhere in the middle of the fish, there is a lull in the talk and again he says,--"Speaking of India--" "Now you really must have some of that fish," interrupts his hostess. And a burst of talk about fish blows his topic into nothingness. He tries next at the roast. "Speaking of India--" he says, and a maid drops gravy over him.

And at last, at the happy last, he gets a real chance.--"Speaking of India," he says, and then his wife breaks in with "Oh! James!"

*****

Madam, do you think it's fair? It is, of course, a great trial for a brilliant woman like you to have to drag around a husband like him. Of course he's a dud. You ought really to have married either Bernard Shaw or Mussolini.

But you didn't. You just married an ordinary plain man like the rest of us, with no particular aspirations to be a humorist, or a raconteur, or a diseuse, or anything of the sort: anxious just to take some little part in the talk about him.

So, next time, when he begins "Speaking of India--" won't you let us hear what it was that happened there?