I object to the type of man who practises practical jokes. Young
Mackenzie and Jim Brown have just played a nasty one on Willie Baffers,
the village lunatic. Poor Willie invented a new aeroplane; he took an
old solid-tyred boneshaker bicycle and fixed feathers to the spokes.
Mackenzie and Brown inspected the invention, and told Willie that his
fortune was as good as made.
Next morning the post brought a letter to Willie from the Munitions
Ministry, offering him four million pounds and threepence hapenny for
the patent rights, and asking Willie to meet a representative at the
Royal Hotel in the town. Willie rode the old bike into town, and
feathered it in the hotel yard. Mackenzie with a false beard on, handed
him a cheque for the four millions, and Willie ran nearly all the eight
miles home to tell of his good fortune.
Macdonald told me the yarn to-night as a rich joke, but I failed to find
any humour in it. It was a low-down trick.
"Good Lord!" I cried, "neither of them is much more intelligent than
Willie. Any man of average ability could take them in as easily as they
took in poor Baffers."
"All the same," tittered Macdonald, "the joke is funny."
"There always is something funny in idiotic things, Macdonald. If I had
seen Willie's invention I should probably have roared; but the glimpse
would have satisfied me. I roar at Charlie Chaplin's idiotic actions,
but I wouldn't be so ready to roar at them if Charlie were really an
idiot. Any fool could spend a lifetime playing jokes on village
lunatics. I could write Willie a letter offering him the command on the
Western front, and signing it 'Lloyd George,' but that sort of fun
doesn't appeal to me."
"I'm different," said Macdonald. "I would think that a good joke. You
think Jim Jackson funny, on the other hand, and I think there's nothing
funny about him."
"What has he been doing now?"
"I gave them an essay on their favourite pets yesterday, and he wrote
one about his pet bee and elephant."
"What did he say about them?"
"Oh, the thing was just a piece of nonsense. He said the bee's name was
Polly, and--I have the thing in my desk," he said, "you can read it for
yourself."