MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY
By Stephen Leacock
PREFACE
The prudent husbandman, after having taken from his field
all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden
rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the
lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom
of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does
the sagacious author, after having sold his material to
the magazines and been paid for it, clap it into book-covers
and give it another squeeze. But in the present case the
author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place
responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to
make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity
Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life,
Puck, The Century, Methuen's Annual, and all others who
are in any way implicated in the making of this book.
STEPHEN LEACOCK.
McGill University,
Montreal.
Oct. 1, 1915.
CONTENTS
I SPOOF: A Thousand-Guinea Novel
II THE READING PUBLIC
III AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB
l--The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So
2--The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge
3--The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner
4--The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer
5--The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot
6--The Last Man Out of Europe
7--The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks
8--The Ground Floor
9--The Hallucination of Mr. Butt
IV RAM SPUDD
V ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES
VI EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE
VII AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE
VIII TRUTHFUL ORATORY
IX OUR LITERARY BUREAU
X SPEEDING UP BUSINESS
XI WHO IS ALSO WHO
XII PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS
XIII WEEJEE THE PET DOG
XIV SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN
XV THE SURVIVAL or THE FITTEST
XVI THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
XVII IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR
I.--Spoof. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating!
Perplexing!
CHAPTER I
Readers are requested to note that this novel has taken
our special prize of a cheque for a thousand guineas.
This alone guarantees for all intelligent readers a
palpitating interest in every line of it. Among the
thousands of MSS. which reached us--many of them coming
in carts early in the morning, and moving in a dense
phalanx, indistinguishable from the Covent Garden Market
waggons; others pouring down our coal-chute during the
working hours of the day; and others again being slipped
surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls,
scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact
many of them came in their night-gowns),--this manuscript
alone was the sole one--in fact the only one--to receive
the prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To other
competitors we may have given, inadvertently perhaps, a
bag of sovereigns or a string of pearls, but to this
story alone is awarded the first prize by the unanimous
decision of our judges.
When we say that the latter body included two members of
the Cabinet, two Lords of the Admiralty, and two bishops,
with power in case of dispute to send all the MSS. to
the Czar of Russia, our readers will breathe a sigh of
relief to learn that the decision was instant and unanimous.
Each one of them, in reply to our telegram, answered
immediately SPOOF.
This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction.
It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond
the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to
INTEREST the reader has long since been abandoned by all
the best writers. They refuse to do it. The modern novel
must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture,
or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology.
Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things.
The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled,
and yet so filled with information that rising itself is
a difficulty.
We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the
first chapter. But the portion here presented was praised
by The Saturday Afternoon Review as giving one of the
most graphic and at the same time realistic pictures of
America ever written in fiction.
Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated
on the deck--on one of the many decks (all connected by
elevators)--of the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere
de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath declared)
a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is
nephew to the Duke of--, but of this fact no one on
the ship, except the captain, the purser, the steward,
and the passengers are, or is, aware.
In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy
is travelling under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere.
In order the better to hide the object of his journey,
Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though our
readers will be able at any moment to turn his name
backwards) has given it to be understood that he is
travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to see America.
This naturally baffles all those in contact with him.
The girl at his side--but perhaps we may best let her
speak for herself.
Somehow as they sat together on the deck of the great
steamer in the afterglow of the sunken sun, listening to
the throbbing of the propeller (a rare sound which neither
of them of course had ever heard before), de Vere felt
that he must speak to her. Something of the mystery of
the girl fascinated him. What was she doing here alone
with no one but her mother and her maid, on the bosom of
the Atlantic? Why was she here? Why was she not somewhere
else? The thing puzzled, perplexed him. It would not let
him alone. It fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt
that if he tried to drive it away, it might nip him in
the ankle.
In the end he spoke.
"And you, too," he said, leaning over her deck-chair,
"are going to America?"
He had suspected this ever since the boat left Liverpool.
Now at length he framed his growing conviction into words.
"Yes," she assented, and then timidly, "it is 3,213 miles
wide, is it not?"
"Yes," he said, "and 1,781 miles deep! It reaches from
the forty-ninth parallel to the Gulf of Mexico."
"Oh," cried the girl, "what a vivid picture! I seem to
see it."
"Its major axis," he went on, his voice sinking almost
to a caress, "is formed by the Rocky Mountains, which
are practically a prolongation of the Cordilleran Range.
It is drained," he continued--
"How splendid!" said the girl.
"Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mississippi, by
the St. Lawrence, and--dare I say it?--by the Upper
Colorado."
Somehow his hand had found hers in the half gloaming,
but she did not check him.
"Go on," she said very simply; "I think I ought to hear
it."
"The great central plain of the interior," he continued,
"is formed by a vast alluvial deposit carried down as
silt by the Mississippi. East of this the range of the
Alleghanies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet in
height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which
the watershed falls to the Atlantic."
He was speaking very quietly but earnestly. No man had
ever spoken to her like this before.
"What a wonderful picture!" she murmured half to herself,
half aloud, and half not aloud and half not to herself.
"Through the whole of it," de Vere went on, "there run
railways, most of them from east to west, though a few
run from west to east. The Pennsylvania system alone
has twenty-one thousand miles of track."
"Twenty-one thousand miles," she repeated; already she
felt her will strangely subordinate to his.
He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking
into her face.
"Dare I tell you," he whispered, "how many employees it
has?"
"Yes," she gasped, unable to resist.
"A hundred and fourteen thousand," he said.
There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently
she spoke, timidly.
"Are there any cities there?"
"Cities!" he said enthusiastically, "ah, yes! let me
try to give you a word-picture of them. Vast cities--with
tall buildings, reaching to the very sky. Why, for
instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York--"
"Yes, yes," she broke in quickly, "how high is it?"
"Seven hundred and fifty feet."
The girl turned and faced him.
"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it. Some other time,
perhaps, but not now."
She had risen and was gathering up her wraps. "And you,"
she said, "why are you going to America?"
"Why?" he answered. "Because I want to see, to know, to
learn. And when I have learned and seen and known, I want
other people to see and to learn and to know. I want to
write it all down, all the vast palpitating picture of
it. Ah! if I only could--I want to see" (and here he
passed his hand through his hair as if trying to remember)
"something of the relations of labour and capital, of
the extraordinary development of industrial machinery,
of the new and intricate organisation of corporation
finance, and in particular I want to try to analyse--no
one has ever done it yet--the men who guide and drive
it all. I want to set down the psychology of the
multimillionaire!"
He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She was thinking
(apparently, for if not, why stand there?).
"Perhaps," she faltered, "I could help you."
"You!"
"Yes, I might." She hesitated. "I--I--come from America."
"You!" said de Vere in astonishment. "With a face and
voice like yours! It is impossible!"
The boldness of the compliment held her speechless for
a moment.
"I do," she said; "my people lived just outside of Cohoes."
"They couldn't have," he said passionately.
"I shouldn't speak to you like this," the girl went on,
"but it's because I feel from what you have said that
you know and love America. And I think I can help you."
"You mean," he said, divining her idea, "that you can
help me to meet a multimillionaire?"
"Yes," she answered, still hesitating.
"You know one?"
"Yes," still hesitating, "I know ONE."
She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened,
when suddenly the dull raucous blast of the foghorn (they
used a raucous one on this ship on purpose) cut the night
air. Wet fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
The girl shivered.
"I must go," she said; "good night."
For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild
thought leaped to his mind to ask her her name or at
least her mother's. With a powerful effort he checked
himself.
"Good night," he said.
She was gone.