Nonsense Novels, Stephen Leacock [open ebook txt] 📗
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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When the sleigh started again the man in the bushes followed doggedly in its track.
Meanwhile John Enderby had made the rounds of his outbuildings. He bedded the fat cattle that blinked in the flashing light of the lantern. He stood a moment among his hogs, and, farmer as he was, forgot his troubles a moment to speak to each, calling them by name. It smote him to think how at times he had been tempted to sell one of the hogs, or even to sell the cattle to clear the mortgage off the place. Thank God, however, he had put that temptation behind him.
As he reached the house a sleigh was standing on the roadway. Anna met him at the door. “John,” she said, “there was a stranger came while you were in the barn, and wanted a lodging for the night; a city man, I reckon, by his clothes. I hated to refuse him, and I put him in Willie’s room. We’ll never want it again, and he’s gone to sleep.”
“Ay, we can’t refuse.”
John Enderby took out the horse to the barn, and then returned to his vigil with Anna beside the fire.
The fumes of the buttermilk had died out of his brain. He was thinking, as he sat there, of midnight and what it would bring.
In the room above, the man in the sealskin coat had thrown himself down, clothes and all, upon the bed, tired with his drive.
“How it all comes back to me,” he muttered as he fell asleep, “the same old room, nothing changed—except them—how worn they look,” and a tear started to his eyes. He thought of his leaving his home fifteen years ago, of his struggle in the great city, of the great idea he had conceived of making money, and of the Farm Investment Company he had instituted—the simple system of applying the crushing power of capital to exact the uttermost penny from the farm loans. And now here he was back again, true to his word, with a million dollars in his belt. “To-morrow,” he had murmured, “I will tell them. It will be Xmas.” Then William—yes, reader, it was William (see line 503 above) had fallen asleep.
The hours passed, and kept passing.
It was 11.30.
Then suddenly Anna started from her place.
“Henry!” she cried as the door opened and a man entered. He advanced gladly to meet her, and in a moment mother and son were folded in a close embrace. It was Henry, the man from Sing Sing. True to his word, he had slipped away unostentatiously at the height of the festivities.
“Alas, Henry,” said the mother after the warmth of the first greetings had passed, “you come at an unlucky hour.” They told him of the mortgage on the farm and the ruin of his home.
“Yes,” said Anna, “not even a bed to offer you,” and she spoke of the strangers who had arrived; of the stricken woman and the child, and the rich man in the sealskin coat who had asked for a night’s shelter.
Henry listened intently while they told him of the man, and a sudden light of intelligence flashed into his eye.
“By Heaven, father, I have it!” he cried. Then, dropping his voice, he said, “Speak low, father. This man upstairs, he had a sealskin coat and silk hat?”
“Yes,” said the father.
“Father,” said Henry, “I saw a man sitting in a sleigh in the cedar swamp. He had money in his hand, and he counted it, and chuckled,—five dollar gold pieces—in all, 1,125,465 dollars and a quarter.”
The father and son looked at one another.
“I see your idea,” said Enderby sternly.
“We’ll choke him,” said Henry.
“Or club him,” said the farmer, “and pay the mortgage.”
Anna looked from one to the other, joy and hope struggling with the sorrow in her face. “Henry, my Henry,” she said proudly, “I knew he would find a way.”
“Come on,” said Henry; “bring the lamp, mother, take the club, father,” and gaily, but with hushed voices, the three stole up the stairs.
The stranger lay sunk in sleep. The back of his head was turned to them as they came in.
“Now, mother,” said the farmer firmly, “hold the lamp a little nearer; just behind the ear, I think, Henry.”
“No,” said Henry, rolling back his sleeve and speaking with the quick authority that sat well upon him, “across the jaw, father, it’s quicker and neater.”
“Well, well,” said the farmer, smiling proudly, “have your own way, lad, you know best.”
Henry raised the club.
But as he did so—stay, what was that? Far away behind the cedar swamp the deep booming of the bell of the village church began to strike out midnight. One, two, three, its tones came clear across the crisp air. Almost at the same moment the clock below began with deep strokes to mark the midnight hour; from the farmyard chicken coop a rooster began to crow twelve times, while the loud lowing of the cattle and the soft cooing of the hogs seemed to usher in the morning of Christmas with its message of peace and goodwill.
The club fell from Henry’s hand and rattled on the floor.
The sleeper woke, and sat up.
“Father! Mother!” he cried.
“My son, my son,” sobbed the father, “we had guessed it was you. We had come to wake you.”
“Yes, it is I,” said William, smiling to his parents, “and I have brought the million dollars. Here it is,” and with that he unstrapped the belt from his waist and laid a million dollars on the table.
“Thank Heaven!” cried Anna, “our troubles are at an end. This money will help clear the mortgage—and the greed of Pinchem & Co. cannot harm us now.”
“The farm was mortgaged!” said William, aghast.
“Ay,” said the farmer, “mortgaged to men who have no conscience, whose greedy hand has nearly brought us to the grave. See how she has aged, my boy,” and he pointed to Anna.
“Father,” said William, in deep tones of contrition, “I am Pinchem & Co. Heaven help me! I see it now. I see at what expense of suffering my fortune was made. I will restore it all, these million dollars, to those I have wronged.”
“No,” said his mother softly. “You repent, dear son, with true Christian repentance. That is enough. You may keep the money. We will look upon it as a trust, a sacred trust, and every time we spend a dollar of it on ourselves we will think of it as a trust.”
“Yes,” said the farmer softly, “your mother is right, the money is a trust, and we will restock the farm with it, buy out the Jones’s property, and regard the whole thing as a trust.”
At this moment the door of the room opened. A woman’s form appeared. It was Caroline, robed in one of Anna’s directoire nightgowns.
“I heard your voices,” she said, and then, as she caught sight of Henry, she gave a great cry.
“My husband!”
“My wife,” said Henry, and folded her to his heart.
“You have left Sing Sing?” cried Caroline with joy.
“Yes, Caroline,” said Henry. “I shall never go back.”
Gaily the reunited family descended. Anna carried the lamp, Henry carried the club. William carried the million dollars.
The tamarack fire roared again upon the hearth. The buttermilk circulated from hand to hand. William and Henry told and retold the story of their adventures. The first streak of the Christmas morn fell through the door-pane.
“Ah, my sons,” said John Enderby, “henceforth let us stick to the narrow path. What is it that the Good Book says: ‘A straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme points.’”
The Man in Asbestos:
An Allegory of the Future
To begin with let me admit that I did it on purpose. Perhaps it was partly from jealousy.
It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head-first into a distant future and be a witness of its marvels.
I wanted to do that too.
I always had been, I still am, a passionate student of social problems. The world of to-day with its roaring machinery, the unceasing toil of its working classes, its strife, its poverty, its war, its cruelty, appals me as I look at it. I love to think of the time that must come some day when man will have conquered nature, and the toil-worn human race enter upon an era of peace.
I loved to think of it, and I longed to see it.
So I set about the thing deliberately.
What I wanted to do was to fall asleep after the customary fashion, for two or three hundred years at least, and wake and find myself in the marvel world of the future.
I made my preparations for the sleep.
I bought all the comic papers that I could find, even the illustrated ones. I carried them up to my room in my hotel: with them I brought up a pork pie and dozens and dozens of doughnuts. I ate the pie and the doughnuts, then sat back in the bed and read the comic papers one after the other. Finally, as I felt the awful lethargy stealing upon me, I reached out my hand for the London Weekly Times, and held up the editorial page before my eye.
It was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it.
I could feel my senses leaving me. In the room across the hall there was a man singing. His voice, that had been loud, came fainter and fainter through the transom. I fell into a sleep, the deep immeasurable sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was hushed. Dimly I could feel the days go past, then the years, and then the long passage of the centuries.
Then, not as it were gradually, but quite suddenly, I woke up, sat up, and looked about me.
Where was I?
Well might I ask myself.
I found myself lying, or rather sitting up, on a broad couch. I was in a great room, dim, gloomy, and dilapidated in its general appearance, and apparently, from its glass cases and the stuffed figures that they contained, some kind of museum.
Beside me sat a man. His face was hairless, but neither old nor young. He wore clothes that looked like the grey ashes of paper that had burned and kept its shape. He was looking at me quietly, but with no particular surprise or interest.
“Quick,” I said, eager to begin; “where am I? Who are you? What year is this; is it the year 3000, or what is it?”
He drew in his breath with a look of annoyance on his face.
“What a queer, excited way you have of speaking,” he said.
“Tell me,” I said again, “is this the year 3000?”
“I think I know what you mean,” he said; “but really I haven’t the faintest idea. I should think it must be at least that, within a hundred years or so; but nobody has kept track of them for so long, it’s hard to say.”
“Don’t you keep track of them any more?” I gasped.
“We used to,” said the man. “I myself can remember that a century or two ago there were still a number of people who used to try to keep track of the year, but it died out along with so many other faddish things of that kind. Why,” he continued, showing for the first time a sort of animation in his talk, “what was the use of it? You see, after we eliminated death—”
“Eliminated death!” I cried, sitting upright. “Good God!”
“What was that expression you used?” queried the man.
“Good God!” I repeated.
“Ah,” he said, “never heard it before. But I was saying that after we had eliminated Death, and Food, and Change, we had practically got rid of Events, and—”
“Stop!” I said, my brain reeling. “Tell me one thing at a time.”
“Humph!” he ejaculated. “I see, you must have been asleep a long time. Go on then and ask questions. Only, if you don’t mind, just as few as possible, and please don’t get interested or excited.”
Oddly enough the first question that sprang to my lips was—
“What are those clothes made of?”
“Asbestos,” answered the man. “They last hundreds of years. We have one suit each, and there are billions of them piled up, if anybody wants a new one.”
“Thank you,” I answered. “Now tell me where I am?”
“You are in a museum. The figures in the cases are specimens like yourself. But here,” he said, “if you want really to find
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