This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.
Further Foolishness
Sketches and Satires on The Follies of The Day
by Stephen Leacock
Preface
Many years ago when I was a boy at school, we had over
our class an ancient and spectacled schoolmaster who was
as kind at heart as he was ferocious in appearance, and
whose memory has suggested to me the title of this book.
It was his practice, on any outburst of gaiety in the
class-room, to chase us to our seats with a bamboo cane
and to shout at us in defiance:
_Now, then, any further foolishness?_
I find by experience that there are quite a number of
indulgent readers who are good enough to adopt the same
expectant attitude towards me now.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
McGILL UNIVERSITY
MONTREAL
November 1, 1916
Contents
FOLLIES IN FICTION
I. Stories Shorter Still
II. The Snoopopaths; or Fifty Stories in One
III. Foreign Fiction in Imported Instalments. Serge the
Superman: A Russian Novel. (Translated, with a
hand pump, out of the original Russian)
MOVIES AND MOTORS, MEN AND WOMEN
IV. Madeline of the Movies: A Photoplay done back
into Words
V. The Call of the Carburettor; or, Mr. Blinks and
his Friends
VI. The Two Sexes, in Fives or Sixes
A Dinner-party Study
VII. The Grass Bachelor's Guide With Sincere Apologies
to the Ladies' Periodicals
VIII. Every Man and his friends. Mr. Crunch's Portrait
Gallery (as Edited from his Private Thoughts)
IX. More than Twice-told Tales; or, Every Man his Own
Hero
X. A Study in Still Life--My Tailor
PEACE, WAR, AND POLITICS
XI. Germany from Within Out
XII. Abdul Aziz has His: An Adventure in the Yildiz
Kiosk
XIII. In Merry Mexico
XIV. Over the Grape Juice; or, The Peacemakers
XV. The White House from Without In
TIMID THOUGHTS ON TIMELY TOPICS
XVI. Are the Rich Happy?
XVII. Humour as I See It
Follies in Fiction
I. Stories Shorter Still
Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual
demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only
thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and
check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak
overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the
dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.
(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY
HANGED BY A HAIR
OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED
The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man
had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely
certain that no conceivable person had done it.
It was therefore time to call in the great detective.
He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment
he whipped out a microscope.
"Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of
the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."
He held up the hair.
"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost
this hair and the criminal is in our hands."
The inexorable chain of logic was complete.
The detective set himself to the search.
For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through
the streets of New York scanning closely every face he
passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.
On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a
tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached
below his ears. The man was about to go on board the
_Gloritania_.
The detective followed him on board.
"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his
full height, he brandished aloft the hair.
"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his
guilt."
"Remove his hat," said the ship's captain sternly.
They did so.
The man was entirely bald.
"Ha!" said the great detective without a moment of
hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about
a million."
(II) A COMPRESSED OLD ENGLISH NOVEL
SWEARWORD THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE
CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY
"Ods bodikins!" exclaimed Swearword the Saxon, wiping
his mailed brow with his iron hand, "a fair morn withal!
Methinks twert lithlier to rest me in yon glade than to
foray me forth in yon fray! Twert it not?"
But there happened to be a real Anglo-Saxon standing by.
"Where in heaven's name," he said in sudden passion, "did
you get that line of English?"
"Churl!" said Swearword, "it is Anglo-Saxon."
"You're a liar!" shouted the Saxon, "it is not. It is
Harvard College, Sophomore Year, Option No. 6."
Swearword, now in like fury, threw aside his hauberk, his
baldrick, and his needlework on the grass.
"Lay on!" said Swearword.
"Have at you!" cried the Saxon.
They laid on and had at one another.
Swearword was killed.
Thus luckily the whole story was cut off on the first
page and ended.
(III) A CONDENSED INTERMINABLE NOVEL
FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE
OR A THOUSAND PAGES FOR A DOLLAR
NOTE.-This story originally contained two hundred and
fifty thousand words. But by a marvellous feat of
condensation it is reduced, without the slightest loss,
to a hundred and six words.
(I)
Edward Endless lived during his youth
in Maine,
in New Hampshire,
in Vermont,
in Massachusetts,
in Rhode Island,
in Connecticut.
(II)
Then the lure of the city lured him. His fate took him to
New York, to Chicago, and to Philadelphia.
In Chicago he lived,
in a boarding-house on Lasalle Avenue,
then he boarded--
in a living-house on Michigan Avenue.
In New York he
had a room in an eating-house on Forty-first Street,
and then--
ate in a rooming-house on Forty-second Street.
In Philadelphia he
used to sleep on Chestnut Street,
and then--
slept on Maple Street.
During all this time women were calling to him. He knew
and came to be friends with--
Margaret Jones,
Elizabeth Smith,
Arabella Thompson,
Jane Williams,
Maud Taylor.
And he also got to know pretty well,
Louise Quelquechose,
Antoinette Alphabetic,
Estelle Etcetera.
And during this same time Art began to call him--
Pictures began to appeal to him.
Statues beckoned to him.
Music maddened him,
and any form of Recitation or Elocution drove
him beside himself.
(III)
Then, one day, he married Margaret Jones.
As soon as he had married her
He was disillusioned.
He now hated her.
Then he lived with Elizabeth Smith--
He had no sooner sat down with her than--
He hated her.
Half mad, he took his things over to Arabella Thompson's
flat to live with her.
The moment she opened the door of the apartment, he loathed
her.
He saw her as she was.
Driven sane with despair, he then--
(Our staff here cut the story off. There are hundreds
and hundreds of pages after this. They show Edward Endless
grappling in the fight for clean politics. The last
hundred pages deal with religion. Edward finds it after
a big fight. But no one reads these pages. There are no
women in them. Our staff cut them out and merely show at
the end--
Edward Purified--
Uplifted--
Transluted.
The whole story is perhaps the biggest thing ever done
on this continent. Perhaps!)
II. Snoopopaths; or, Fifty Stories in One
This particular study in the follies of literature is
not so much a story as a sort of essay. The average reader
will therefore turn from it with a shudder. The condition
of the average reader's mind is such that he can take in
nothing but fiction. And it must be thin fiction at
that--thin as gruel. Nothing else will "sit on his
stomach."
Everything must come to the present-day reader in this
form. If you wish to talk to him about religion, you
must dress it up as a story and label it _Beth-sheba_,
or _The Curse of David_; if you want to improve the
reader's morals, you must write him a little thing in
dialogue called _Mrs. Potiphar Dines Out_. If you wish
to expostulate with him about drink, you must do so
through a narrative called _Red Rum_--short enough and
easy enough for him to read it, without overstraining
his mind, while he drinks cocktails.
But whatever the story is about it has got to deal--in
order to be read by the average reader--with A MAN and
A WOMAN, I put these words in capitals to indicate that
they have got to stick out of the story with the crudity
of a drawing done by a child with a burnt stick. In other
words, the story has got to be snoopopathic. This is a
word derived from the Greek--"snoopo"--or if there never
was a Greek verb snoopo, at least there ought to have
been one--and it means just what it seems to mean. Nine
out of ten short stories written in America are
snoopopathic.
In snoopopathic literature, in order to get its full
effect, the writer generally introduces his characters
simply as "the man" and "the woman." He hates to admit
that they have no names. He opens out with them something
after this fashion: "The Man lifted his head. He looked
about him at the gaily bedizzled crowd that besplotched
the midnight cabaret with riotous patches of colour. He
crushed his cigar against the brass of an Egyptian tray.
'Bah!' he murmured, 'Is it worth it?' Then he let his
head sink again."
You notice it? He lifted his head all the way up and let
it sink all the way down, and you still don't know who
he is. For The Woman the beginning is done like this:
"The Woman clenched her white hands till the diamonds
that glittered upon her fingers were buried in the soft
flesh. 'The shame of it,' she murmured. Then she took
from the table the telegram that lay crumpled upon it
and tore it into a hundred pieces. 'He dare not!' she
muttered through her closed teeth. She looked about the
hotel room with its garish furniture. 'He has no right
to follow me here,' she gasped."
All of which the reader has to take in without knowing
who the woman is, or which hotel she is staying at, or
who dare not follow her or why. But the modern reader
loves to get this sort of shadowy incomplete effect. If
he were told straight out that the woman's name was Mrs.
Edward Dangerfield of Brick City, Montana, and that she
had left her husband three days ago and that the telegram
told her that he had discovered her address and was
following her, the reader would refuse to go on.
This method of introducing the characters is bad enough.
But the new snoopopathic way of describing them is still
worse. The Man is always detailed as if he were a horse.
He is said to be "tall, well set up, with straight legs."
Great stress is always laid on his straight legs. No
magazine story is acceptable now unless The Man's legs
are absolutely straight. Why this is, I don't know. All
my friends have straight legs--and yet I never hear them
make it a subject of comment or boasting. I don't believe
I have, at present, a single friend with crooked legs.
But this is not the only requirement. Not only must The
Man's legs be straight but he must be "clean-limbed,"
whatever that is; and of course he must have a "well-tubbed
look about him." How this look is acquired, and whether
it can be got with an ordinary bath and water are things
on which I have no opinion.
The Man is of course "clean-shaven." This allows him to
do such necessary things as "turning his clean-shaven
face towards the speaker," "laying his clean-shaven cheek
in his hand," and so on. But every one is familiar with
the face of the up-to-date clean-shaven snoopopathic man.
There are pictures of him by the million on magazine
covers and book jackets, looking into the eyes of The
Woman--he does it from a distance of about six inches--with
that snoopy earnest expression of brainlessness that he
always wears. How one would enjoy seeing a man--a real
one with Nevada whiskers and long boots--land him one
solid kick from behind.
Then comes The Woman of the snoopopathic story. She is
always "beautifully groomed" (who these grooms are that
do it, and where they can be hired, I don't know), and
she is said to be "exquisitely gowned."
It is peculiar about The Woman that she never seems to
wear a _dress_--always a "gown." Why this is, I cannot
tell. In the good old stories that I used to read, when
I could still read for the pleasure of it, the heroines
--that was what they used to be called--always wore
dresses. But now there is no heroine, only a woman in a
gown. I wear a gown myself--at night. It is made of
flannel and reaches to my feet, and when I take my candle
and go out to the balcony where I sleep, the effect of
it on the whole is not bad. But as to its "revealing
every line of my figure"--as The Woman's gown is always
said to--and as to its "suggesting even more than it
reveals"--well, it simply does _not_. So when I talk of
"gowns" I speak of something that I know all about.
Yet, whatever The Woman does, her "gown" is said to
"cling" to her. Whether in the street or in a _cabaret_
or in the drawing-room, it "clings." If by any happy
chance she throws a lace wrap about her, then it clings;
and if she lifts her gown--as she is apt to--it shows,
not what I should have expected, but a _jupon_, and even
that clings. What a _jupon_ is I don't know. With my
gown, I never wear one. These people I have described,
The Man and The Woman--The Snoopopaths--are, of course,
not husband and wife, or brother and sister, or anything
so simple and old-fashioned as that. She is some one
else's wife. She is _The Wife of the Other Man_. Just
what there is, for the reader, about other men's wives,
I don't understand. I know tons of them that I wouldn't
walk round a block for. But the reading public goes wild
over them. The old-fashioned heroine was unmarried. That
spoiled the whole story. You could see the end from the
beginning. But with Another Man's Wife, the way is blocked.
Something has got to happen that would seem almost obvious
to anyone.
The writer, therefore, at once puts the two snoopos--The
Man and The Woman--into a frightfully indelicate position.
The more indelicate it is, the better. Sometimes she gets
into his motor by accident after the theatre, or they
both engage the drawing-room of a Pullman car by mistake,
or else, best of all, he is brought accidentally into
her room at an hotel at night. There is something about
an hotel room at night, apparently, which throws the
modern reader into convulsions. It is always easy to
arrange a scene of this sort. For example, taking the
sample beginning that I gave above, The Man, whom I left
sitting at the _cabaret_ table, above, rises unsteadily
--it is the recognised way of rising in a _cabaret_--and,
settling the reckoning with the waiter, staggers into
the street. For myself I never do a reckoning with the
waiter. I just pay the bill as he adds it, and take a
chance on it.
As The Man staggers into the "night air," the writer has
time--just a little time, for the modern reader is
impatient--to explain who he is and why he staggers. He
is rich. That goes without saying. All clean-limbed men
with straight legs are rich. He owns copper mines in
Montana. All well-tubbed millionaires do. But he has left
them, left everything, because of the Other Man's Wife.
It was that or madness--or worse. He had told himself so
a thousand times. (This little touch about "worse" is
used in all the stories. I don't just understand what
the "worse" means. But snoopopathic readers reach for it
with great readiness.) So The Man had come to New York
(the only place where stories are allowed to be laid)
under an assumed name, to forget, to drive her from his
mind. He had plunged into the mad round of--I never could
find it myself, but it must be there, and as they all
plunge into it, it must be as full of them as a sheet of
Tanglefoot is of flies.
"As The Man walked home to his hotel, the cool night air
steadied him, but his brain is still filled with the
fumes of the wine he had drunk." Notice these "fumes."
It must be great to float round with them in one's brain,
where they apparently lodge. I have often tried to find
them, but I never can. Again and again I have said,
"Waiter, bring me a Scotch whisky and soda with fumes."
But I can never get them.
Thus goes The Man to his hotel. Now it is in a room in
this same hotel that The Woman is sitting, and in which
she has crumpled up the telegram. It is to this hotel
that she has come when she left her husband, a week ago.
The readers know, without even being told, that she left
him "to work out her own salvation"--driven, by his cold
brutality, beyond the breaking-point. And there is laid
upon her soul, as she sits there with clenched hands,
the dust and ashes of a broken marriage and a loveless
life, and the knowledge, too late, of all that might have
been.
And it is to this hotel that The Woman's Husband is
following her.
But The Man does not know that she is in the hotel, nor
that she has left her husband; it is only accident that
brings them together. And it is only by accident that he
has come into her room, at night, and stands there--rooted
to the threshold. Now as a matter of fact, in real life,
there is nothing at all in the simple fact of walking
into the wrong room of an hotel by accident. You merely
apologise and go out. I had this experience myself only
a few days ago. I walked right into a lady's room--next
door to my own. But I simply said, "Oh, I beg your pardon,
I thought this was No. 343."
"No," she said, "this is 341."
She did not rise and "confront" me, as they always do in
the snoopopathic stories. Neither did her eyes flash,
nor her gown cling to her as she rose. Nor was her gown
made of "rich old stuff." No, she merely went on reading
her newspaper.
"I must apologise," I said. "I am a little short-sighted,
and very often a _one_ and a _three_ look so alike that
I can't tell them apart. I'm afraid--"
"Not at all," said the lady. "Good evening."
"You see," I added, "this room and my own being so alike,
and mine being 343 and this being 341, I walked in before
I realised that instead of walking into 343 I was walking
into 341."
She bowed in silence, without speaking, and I felt that
it was now the part of exquisite tact to retire quietly
without further explanation, or at least with only a few
murmured words about the possibility of to-morrow being
even colder than to-day. I did so, and the affair ended
with complete _savoir faire_ on both sides.
But the Snoopopaths, Man and Woman, can't do this sort
of thing, or, at any rate, the snoopopathic writer won't
let them. The opportunity is too good to miss. As soon
as The Man comes into The Woman's room--before he knows
who she is, for she has her back to him--he gets into a
condition dear to all snoopopathic readers.
His veins simply "surged." His brain beat against his
temples in mad pulsation. His breath "came and went in
quick, short pants." (This last might perhaps be done by
one of the hotel bellboys, but otherwise it is hard to
imagine.)
And The Woman--"Noiseless as his step had been, she seemed
to _sense_ his presence. A wave seemed to sweep over her
--She turned and rose fronting him full." This doesn't
mean that he was full when she fronted him. Her gown--but
we know about that already. "It was a coward's trick,"
she panted.
Now if The Man had had the kind of _savoir faire_ that
I have, he would have said: "Oh, pardon me! I see this
room is 341. My own room is 343, and to me a _one_ and
a _three_ often look so alike that I seem to have walked
into 341 while looking for 343." And he could have
explained in two words that he had no idea that she was
in New York, was not following her, and not proposing to
interfere with her in any way. And she would have explained
also in two sentences why and how she came to be there.
But this wouldn't do. Instead of it, The Man and The
Woman go through the grand snoopopathic scene which is
so intense that it needs what is really a new kind of
language to convey it.
"Helene," he croaked, reaching out his arms--his voice
tensed with the infinity of his desire.
"Back," she iced. And then, "Why have you come here?"
she hoarsed. "What business have you here?"
"None," he glooped, "none. I have no business." They
stood sensing one another.
"I thought you were in Philadelphia," she said--her gown
clinging to every fibre of her as she spoke.
"I was," he wheezed.
"And you left it?" she sharped, her voice tense.
"I left it," he said, his voice glumping as he spoke.
"Need I tell you why?" He had come nearer to her. She
could hear his pants as he moved.
"No, no," she gurgled. "You left it. It is enough. I can
understand"--she looked bravely up at him--"I can
understand any man leaving it."
Then as he moved still nearer her, there was the sound
of a sudden swift step in the corridor. The door opened
and there stood before them The Other Man, the Husband
of The Woman--Edward Dangerfield.
This, of course, is the grand snoopopathic climax, when
the author gets all three of them--The Man, The Woman,
and The Woman's Husband--in an hotel room at night. But
notice what happens.
He stood in the opening of the doorway looking at them,
a slight smile upon his lips.
"Well?" he said. Then he entered the room and stood for
a moment quietly looking into The Man's face.
"So," he said, "it was you." He walked into the room and
laid the light coat that he had been carrying over his
arm upon the table. He drew a cigar-case from his waistcoat
pocket.
"Try one of these Havanas," he said.
Observe the _calm_ of it. This is what the snoopopath
loves--no rage, no blustering--calmness, cynicism. He
walked over towards the mantelpiece and laid his hat upon
it. He set his boot upon the fender.
"It was cold this evening," he said. He walked over to
the window and gazed a moment into the dark.
"This is a nice hotel," he said. (This scene is what the
author and the reader love; they hate to let it go. They'd
willingly keep the man walking up and down for hours
saying "Well!")
The Man raised his head! "Yes, it's a good hotel," he
said. Then he let his head fall again.
This kind of thing goes on until, if possible, the reader
is persuaded into thinking that there is nothing going
to happen. Then:
"He turned to The Woman. 'Go in there,' he said, pointing
to the bedroom door. Mechanically she obeyed." This, by
the way, is the first intimation that the reader has that
the room in which they were sitting was not a bedroom.
The two men were alone. Dangerfield walked over to the
chair where he had thrown his coat.
"I bought this coat in St. Louis last fall," he said.
His voice was quiet, even passionless. Then from the
pocket of the coat he took a revolver and laid it on the
table. Marsden watched him without a word.
"Do you see this pistol?" said Dangerfield.
Marsden raised his head a moment and let it sink.
Of course the ignorant reader keeps wondering why he
doesn't explain. But how can he? What is there to say?
He has been found out of his own room at night. The
penalty for this in all the snoopopathic stories is death.
It is understood that in all the New York hotels the
night porters shoot a certain number of men in the
corridors every night.
"When we married," said Dangerfield, glancing at the
closed door as he spoke, "I bought this and the mate to
it--for her--just the same, with the monogram on the
butt--see! And I said to her, 'If things ever go wrong
between you and me, there is always this way out.'"
He lifted the pistol from the table, examining its
mechanism. He rose and walked across the room till he
stood with his back against the door, the pistol in his
hand, its barrel pointing straight at Marsden's heart.
Marsden never moved. Then as the two men faced one another
thus, looking into one another's eyes, their ears caught
a sound from behind the closed door of the inner room--a
sharp, hard, metallic sound as if some one in the room
within had raised the hammer of a pistol--a jewelled
pistol like the one in Dangerfield's hand.
And then--
A loud report, and with a cry, the cry of a woman, one
shrill despairing cry--
Or no, hang it--I can't consent to end up a story in that
fashion, with the dead woman prone across the bed, the
smoking pistol, with a jewel on the hilt, still clasped
in her hand--the red blood welling over the white laces
of her gown--while the two men gaze down upon her cold
face with horror in their eyes. Not a bit. Let's end it
like this:
"A shrill despairing cry--'Ed! Charlie! Come in here
quick! Hurry! The steam coil has blown out a plug! You
two boys quit talking and come in here, for heaven's
sake, and fix it.'" And, indeed, if the reader will look
back he will see there is nothing in the dialogue to
preclude it. He was misled, that's all. I merely said
that Mrs. Dangerfield had left her husband a few days
before. So she had--to do some shopping in New York. She
thought it mean of him to follow her. And I never said
that Mrs. Dangerfield had any connection whatever with
The Woman with whom Marsden was in love. Not at all. He
knew her, of course, because he came from Brick City.
But she had thought he was in Philadelphia, and naturally
she was surprised to see him back in New York. That's
why she exclaimed "Back!" And as a matter of plain fact,
you can't pick up a revolver without its pointing somewhere.
No one said he meant to fire it.
In fact, if the reader will glance back at the dialogue--I
know he has no time to, but if he does--he will see that,
being something of a snoopopath himself, he has invented
the whole story.
III. Foreign Fiction in Imported Instalments.
Serge the Superman: A Russian Novel
(Translated, with a hand pump, out of the original Russian)
SPECIAL EDITORIAL NOTE, OR, FIT OF CONVULSIONS INTO
WHICH AN EDITOR FALLS IN INTRODUCING THIS SORT OF
STORY TO HIS READERS. We need offer no apology to
our readers in presenting to them a Russian novel.
There is no doubt that the future in literature lies
with Russia. The names of Tolstoi, of Turgan-something,
and Dostoi-what-is-it are household words in America.
We may say with certainty that Serge the Superman is
the most distinctly Russian thing produced in years.
The Russian view of life is melancholy and fatalistic.
It is dark with the gloom of the great forests of the
Volga, and saddened with the infinite silence of the
Siberian plain. Hence the Russian speech, like the
Russian thought, is direct, terse and almost crude in
its elemental power. All this appears in Serge the
Superman. It is the directest, tersest, crudest thing
we have ever seen. We showed the manuscript to a friend
of ours, a critic, a man who has a greater Command of
the language of criticism than perhaps any two men in
New York to-day. He said at once, "This is big. It is
a big thing, done by a big man, a man with big ideas,
writing at his very biggest. The whole thing has a
bigness about it that is--" and here he paused and
thought a moment and added--"big." After this he sat
back in his chair and said, "big, big, big," till we
left him. We next showed the story to an English critic
and he said without hesitation, or with very little,
"This is really not half bad." Last of all we read
the story ourselves and we rose after its perusal--itself
not an easy thing to do--and said, "Wonderful but
terrible." All through our (free) lunch that day we
shuddered.
CHAPTER I
As a child. Serge lived with his father--Ivan Ivanovitch
--and his mother--Katrina Katerinavitch. In the house,
too were Nitska, the serving maid. Itch, the serving man,
and Yump, the cook, his wife.
The house stood on the borders of a Russian town. It was
in the heart of Russia. All about it was the great plain
with the river running between low banks and over it the
dull sky.
Across the plain ran the post road, naked and bare. In
the distance one could see a moujik driving a three-horse
tarantula, or perhaps Swill, the swine-herd, herding the
swine. Far away the road dipped over the horizon and was
lost.
"Where does it go to?" asked Serge. But no one could tell
him.
In the winter there came the great snows and the river
was frozen and Serge could walk on it.
On such days Yob, the postman, would come to the door,
stamping his feet with the cold as he gave the letters
to Itch.
"It is a cold day," Yob would say.
"It is God's will," said Itch. Then he would fetch a
glass of Kwas steaming hot from the great stove, built
of wood, that stood in the kitchen.
"Drink, little brother," he would say to Yob, and Yob
would answer, "Little Uncle, I drink your health," and
he would go down the road again, stamping his feet with
the cold.
Then later the spring would come and all the plain was
bright with flowers and Serge could pick them. Then the
rain came and Serge could catch it in a cup. Then the
summer came and the great heat and the storms, and Serge
could watch the lightning.
"What is lightning for?" he would ask of Yump, the cook,
as she stood kneading the _mush_, or dough, to make
_slab_, or pancake, for the morrow. Yump shook her _knob_,
or head, with a look of perplexity on her big _mugg_, or
face.
"It is God's will," she said.
Thus Serge grew up a thoughtful child.
At times he would say to his mother, "Matrinska (little
mother), why is the sky blue?" And she couldn't tell him.
Or at times he would say to his father, "Boob (Russian
for father), what is three times six?" But his father
didn't know.
Each year Serge grew.
Life began to perplex the boy. He couldn't understand
it. No one could tell him anything.
Sometimes he would talk with Itch, the serving man.
"Itch," he asked, "what is morality?" But Itch didn't
know. In his simple life he had never heard of it.
At times people came to the house--Snip, the schoolmaster,
who could read and write, and Cinch, the harness maker,
who made harness.
Once there came Popoff, the inspector of police, in his
blue coat with fur on it. He stood in front of the fire
writing down the names of all the people in the house.
And when he came to Itch, Serge noticed how Itch trembled
and cowered before Popoff, cringing as he brought a
three-legged stool and saying, "Sit near the fire, little
father; it is cold." Popoff laughed and said, "Cold as
Siberia, is it not, little brother?" Then he said, "Bare
me your arm to the elbow, and let me see if our mark is
on it still." And Itch raised his sleeve to the elbow
and Serge saw that there was a mark upon it burnt deep
and black.
"I thought so," said Popoff, and he laughed. But Yump,
the cook, beat the fire with a stick so that the sparks
flew into Popoff's face. "You are too near the fire,
little inspector," she said. "It burns."
All that evening Itch sat in the corner of the kitchen,
and Serge saw that there were tears on his face.
"Why does he cry?" asked Serge.
"He has been in Siberia," said Yump as she poured water
into the great iron pot to make soup for the week after
the next.
Serge grew more thoughtful each year.
All sorts of things, occurrences of daily life, set him
thinking. One day he saw some peasants drowning a tax
collector in the river. It made a deep impression on him.
He couldn't understand it. There seemed something wrong
about it.
"Why did they drown him?" he asked of Yump, the cook.
"He was collecting taxes," said Yump, and she threw a
handful of cups into the cupboard.
Then one day there was great excitement in the town, and
men in uniform went to and fro and all the people stood
at the doors talking.
"What has happened?" asked Serge.
"It is Popoff, inspector of police," answered Itch. "They
have found him beside the river."
"Is he dead?" questioned Serge.
Itch pointed reverently to the ground--"He is there!" he
said.
All that day Serge asked questions. But no one would tell
him anything. "Popoff is dead," they said. "They have
found him beside the river with his ribs driven in on
his heart."
"Why did they kill him?" asked Serge.
But no one would say.
So after this Serge was more perplexed than ever.
Every one noticed how thoughtful Serge was.
"He is a wise boy," they said. "Some day he will be a
learned man. He will read and write."
"Defend us!" exclaimed Itch. "It is a dangerous thing."
One day Liddoff, the priest, came to the house with a
great roll of paper in his hand.
"What is it?" asked Serge.
"It is the alphabet," said Liddoff.
"Give it to me," said Serge with eagerness.
"Not all of it," said Liddoff gently. "Here is part of
it," and he tore off a piece and gave it to the boy.
"Defend us!" said Yump, the cook. "It is not a wise
thing," and she shook her head as she put a new lump of
clay in the wooden stove to make it burn more brightly.
Then everybody knew that Serge was learning the alphabet,
and that when he had learned it he was to go to Moscow,
to the Teknik, and learn what else there was.
So the days passed and the months. Presently Ivan Ivanovitch
said, "Now he is ready," and he took down a bag of rubles
that was concealed on a shelf beside the wooden stove in
the kitchen and counted them out after the Russian fashion,
"Ten, ten, and yet ten, and still ten, and ten," till he
could count no further.
"Protect us!" said Yump. "Now he is rich!" and she poured
oil and fat mixed with sand into the bread and beat it
with a stick.
"He must get ready," they said. "He must buy clothes.
Soon he will go to Moscow to the Teknik and become a wise
man."
Now it so happened that there came one day to the door
a drosky, or one-horse carriage, and in it was a man and
beside him a girl. The man stopped to ask the way from
Itch, who pointed down the post road over the plain. But
his hand trembled and his knees shook as he showed the
way. For the eyes of the man who asked the way were dark
with hate and cruel with power. And he wore a uniform
and there was brass upon his cap. But Serge looked only
at the girl. And there was no hate in her eyes, but only
a great burning, and a look that went far beyond the
plain, Serge knew not where. And as Serge looked, the
girl turned her face and their eyes met, and he knew that
he would never forget her. And he saw in her face that
she would never forget him. For that is love.
"Who is that?" he asked, as he went back again with Itch
into the house.
"It is Kwartz, chief of police," said Itch, and his knees
still trembled as he spoke.
"Where is he taking her?" said Serge.
"To Moscow, to the prison," answered Itch. "There they
will hang her and she will die."
"Who is she?" asked Serge. "What has she done?" and as
he spoke he could still see the girl's face, and the look
upon it, and a great fire went sweeping through his veins.
"She is Olga Ileyitch," answered Itch, "She made the bomb
that killed Popoff, the inspector, and now they will hang
her and she will die."
"Defend us!" murmured Yump, as she heaped more clay upon
the stove.