"A few days ago I gave you a ha'penny each," I said. "Write a
description of how you spent it, and I'll give sixpence to the one who
tells the biggest lie."
I got some tall yarns. One chap bought an aeroplane and torpedoed a
Zeppelin with it; one girl bought a thousand motor-cars. But Jack Hood,
the dunce of the class, wrote these words: "I took it to the church on
Sunday and put it in the clecshun bag."
I gave him the tanner, although I knew that he had won it by accident. I
don't think that Jack will ever get so great a surprise again in this
life.
* * *
We rambled out to sketch this afternoon. It was very hot, and we lay
down under a tree and slept for half-an-hour. Suddenly Violet Brown
started up.
"Here's Antonio!" she cried, and the Italian drew his van to the side of
the road.
"A slider for each of us," I said, and he began to hustle. My turn came
last.
"You like a glass, zir, instead of a zlider?" said Antonio.
"Yes," I replied, "a jolly good suggestion; I haven't had the joy of
licking an ice-cream glass dry for many a long day."
It was glorious.
On the way back a girl bought sweets at the village shop. She gave me
one.
"Please, sir, it's one of them changing kind," she said.
"Eh?" I hastily took it out and looked at it.
"By George, so it is, Katie!" I cried, "I thought they were dead long
since." It was white at first but it changed to blue, then red, then
green, then purple. Unfortunately, I bit it unthinkingly, and I never
discovered its complete spectrum.
I call this a lucky day; ice cream and changing balls in one afternoon
are the quintessence of luck. But man is insatiable; to-night I have a
great craving for a stick of twisted sugarelly--the polite call it
liquorice.
* * *
A couple of Revivalists came to the village a week ago, and they have
made a few converts. One of them stopped me on the road to-night and
asked if I were saved.
"I am, or, at least, was, a journalist," I said, and walked on
chuckling. Of course he gaped, for he did not know why I chuckled. I was
thinking of the reporter sitting in the back seat at a Salvationist
Meeting. A Salvation lass bent over him. "Are you saved, my friend?" she
whispered. He looked up in alarm.
"I'm a journalist," he said hastily.
"O! I beg your pardon," she said, and moved on.
I don't like Revivalism. A couple of preachers came to our village when
I was a lad, and for a month I thought of nothing but hell. "Only
believe!" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other
one had a shorter salutation: "Glory!" he shouted at you fiercely.
Incidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they
departed. And the young women who had stood up to give their "Testimony"
were back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks.
Lizzie Jane Gunn was a typical convert. Lizzie Jane used to describe the
night of her testimony-giving thus:--"Mind you, Aw was gaein' alang the
road, and Aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and
Aw was by ma leensome. Weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand,
and Aw thocht that it was a message frae the Loard; so Aw just grippit
ma hand ticht, an' Aw didna look to see fat it wuz. Fan Aw got hame Aw
lookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button
aff ma jaicket!"
I have no sympathy with all this "saving" business. It's a cowardly
selfish religion that makes people so anxious about their
tuppence-ha'penny souls. When I think of all the illiterate lay
preachers I have listened to I feel like little Willie at the Sunday
School.
"Hands up all those who would like to go to Heaven!" said the teacher.
Willie alone did not put his hand up.
"What! Mean to tell me, Willie, that you don't want to go to Heaven?"
Willie jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the others.
"No bloomin' fear," he muttered, "not if that crowd's goin'."
Shelley says that "most wretched men are cradled into poetry through
wrong." I think that most wretched preachers are cradled into preaching
through conceit. It is thrilling to have an audience hang upon your
words; we all like the limelight. Usually we have to master a stiff part
before we can face the audience. Preaching needs no preparation, no
thinking, no merit; all you do is to stand up and say: "Deara friendsa,
when I was in the jimmynasium at Peebles, a fellow lodger of mine
blasphemeda. From that daya, deara friendsa, that son of the devila
nevera prospereda. O, friendsa! If you could only looka into your evila
heartsa...."
I note that when Revivalists come to a village the so-called village
lunatic is always among the first to give his testimony. Willie Baffers
has been whistling _Life, Life, Eternal Life_ all the week, but I was
glad to note that he was back to _Stop yer Ticklin', Jock_, to-night.
* * *
I have introduced two new text-books--_Secret Remedies_, and _More
Secret Remedies_. These books are published by the British Medical
Association at a shilling each, and they give the ingredients and cost
of popular patent medicines.
These books should be in every school. Everyone should know the truth
about these medicines, and unless our schools tell the truth, the public
will never know it. No daily newspaper would think of giving the truth,
for the average daily is kept alive by patent medicine advertisements.
I marvel at the mentality of the man who can sell a farthing's worth of
drugs for three and sixpence. I don't blame the man; I merely marvel at
him. What is his standard of truth? What does he imagine the purpose of
life to be?
Poor fellow! I fancy he is a man born with a silver knife in his mouth,
as Chesterton says in another context; either that, or he is born poor
in worldly goods and in spirit. He is dumped down in an out-of-joint
world where money and power are honoured, where honesty is never the
best policy; the poor, miserable little grub realises that he has not
the ability to earn money or power honestly; but he knows that people
are fools, and that a knave always gets the better of a fool.
Our laws are really funny. I can swindle thousands by selling a
nostrum, but if I sign Andrew Carnegie's name on a cheque I am sent to
Peterhead Prison. Britain is individualistic to the backbone. The
individual must be protected, but the crowd can look after itself. If I
steal a pair of boots and run for it, I am a base thief; if I turn
bookie and become a welsher I have entered the higher realms of sport,
and I get a certain amount of admiration ... from those who didn't
plunge at my corner. I have seen a cheap-jack swindle a crowd of
Forfarshire ploughmen out of a month's earnings, but not one of them
thought of dusting the street with him.
Honesty must be a relative thing. Personally I will "swick" a railway
company by travelling without a ticket on any possible occasion; yet,
when a cycle agent puts a new nut on my motor-bike and charges a
shilling I call him a vulgar thief. Of course he is; there is no romance
in making a broken-down motor-cyclist pay through the nose, but a ten
mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a
drab world.
I once saw an article on _Railway Criminals_ in, I think, _Tit-Bits_.
It pointed out that the men who are convicted of swindling the railway
companies have well marked facial characteristics. I recollect going to
the mirror at the time and saying "Tu quoque!"
In these days I had a firm belief in physiognomy; I believed that you
had only to gaze into a person's eyes to see whether he was telling the
truth or not. I am wiser now that I know Peter Young. Pete is ten, and
he has a clear, honest countenance. To-night I found him tinkering with
the valve of my back tyre.
"Who loosened that valve?" I demanded.
"Please, sir, it was Jim Steel," he said unblushingly, and he looked me
straight in the eyes.
"All right, George Washington," I remarked. "There's a seat in the
Cabinet, waiting for you, my lad." And I meant it too. I believe in the
survival of the fittest, and I know that Peter is the best adapted to
survive in a modern civilisation. It is said of his father that he
bought an old woman's ill-grown pig, a white one, and promised her a
fine piebald pig in a week's time. He brought her the piebald. Then
rain came....
I often condemn the press for not seeking truth, yet no man has a
greater admiration for a good liar than I have. When I hear a fellow
break in on a conversation with the words: "Talking of Lloyd George,
when I was in the Argentine last winter...." I grapple him to my soul
with hoops of steel. I can't stand the common or garden liar with his
trite expressions.... "So the missis is keeping better, old man? Glad to
hear it." "Your singing has improved wonderfully, my dear." "I was kept
late at the office," and all that sort of lie. All the same I recognise
that we are all liars, and few of us can evade the trite manner of
lying.
I met a man on the road to-night, and he stopped to talk. I hate the
fellow; he is one of those mean men who would plant potatoes on his
mother's grave if the cemetery authorities would allow it. Yet I shook
his greasy hand when he held it out. If I had had the tense honesty of
Ibsen's _Brand_ I should have refused to see his hand. But we all lie in
this way; indeed, life would be intolerable if we were all _Brands_ and
cried "All or Nothing!" We all compromise, and compromise is the worst
lie of all. Compromise I can pardon, but not gush. I know men who could
say to old greasy-fist: "Man, I'm glad to see you looking so well!" men
who would cut his throat if they had the pluck. Nevertheless gush is not
one of the Scot's chief characteristics.
There is a shepherd's hut up north, and George Broon lives there alone.
Once another shepherd came up that way, and he thought he would settle
down with George for a time. The newcomer, Tam Kennedy, came in after
his day's work, and the two smoked in silence for two hours. Then Tam
remarked: "Aw saw a bull doon the road the nicht."