Frenzied Fiction, Stephen Leacock [books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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Vassar Girl asks:
What is the date of the birth of Caracalla?
Answer: I couldn’t say.
Lexicographer asks:
Can you tell me the proper way to spell “dog”?
Answer: Certainly. “Dog” should be spelt, properly and precisely, “dog.” When it is used in the sense to mean not “a dog” or “one dog” but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss like z in soup.
But for all these questions of spelling your best plan is to buy a copy of Our Standard Dictionary, published in ten volumes, by this newspaper, at forty dollars.
Ignoramus asks:
Can you tell me how to spell “cat”?
Answer: Didn’t you hear what we just said about how to spell “dog”? Buy the Dictionary.
Careworn Mother asks:
I am most anxious to find out the relation of the earth’s diameter to its circumference. Can you, or any of your readers, assist me in it?
Answer: The earth’s circumference is estimated to be three decimal one four one five nine of its diameter, a fixed relation indicated by the Greek letter pi. If you like we will tell you what pi is. Shall we?
“Brink of Suicide” writes:
Can you, will you, tell me what is the Sanjak of Novi Bazar?
Answer. The Sanjak of Novi Bazar is bounded on the north by its northern frontier, cold and cheerless, and covered during the winter with deep snow. The east of the Sanjak occupies a more easterly position. Here the sun rises—at first slowly, but gathering speed as it goes. After having traversed the entire width of the whole Sanjak, the magnificent orb, slowly and regretfully, sinks into the west. On the south, where the soil is more fertile and where the land begins to be worth occupying, the Sanjak is, or will be, bounded by the British Empire.
XVI. Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life
Let me begin with a sort of parable. Many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged a new swimming master.
He was the most successful man in that capacity that we had had for years.
Then one day it was discovered that he couldn’t swim.
He was standing at the edge of the swimming tank explaining the breast stroke to the boys in the water.
He lost his balance and fell in. He was drowned.
Or no, he wasn’t drowned, I remember,—he was rescued by some of the pupils whom he had taught to swim.
After he was resuscitated by the boys—it was one of the things he had taught them—the school dismissed him.
Then some of the boys who were sorry for him taught him how to swim, and he got a new job as a swimming master in another place.
But this time he was an utter failure. He swam well, but they said he couldn’t teach.
So his friends looked about to get him a new job. This was just at the time when the bicycle craze came in. They soon found the man a position as an instructor in bicycle riding. As he had never been on a bicycle in his life, he made an admirable teacher. He stood fast on the ground and said, “Now then, all you need is confidence.”
Then one day he got afraid that he might be found out. So he went out to a quiet place and got on a bicycle, at the top of a slope, to learn to ride it. The bicycle ran away with him. But for the skill and daring of one of his pupils, who saw him and rode after him, he would have been killed.
This story, as the reader sees, is endless. Suffice it to say that the man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly. They say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.
According to all the legends and story books, the principal factor in success is perseverance. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If anything, the truth lies the other way.
There is an old motto that runs, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This is nonsense. It ought to read, “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, at once.”
If you can’t do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
I remember, long years ago, at a little school that I attended in the country, we had a schoolmaster, who used perpetually to write on the blackboard, in a copperplate hand, the motto that I have just quoted:
“If at first you don’t succeed, Try, try, again.”He wore plain clothes and had a hard, determined face. He was studying for some sort of preliminary medical examination, and was saving money for a medical course. Every now and then he went away to the city and tried the examination: and he always failed. Each time he came back, he would write up on the blackboard:
“Try, try again.”And always he looked grimmer and more determined than before. The strange thing was that, with all his industry and determination, he would break out every now and then into drunkenness, and lie round the tavern at the crossroads, and the school would be shut for two days. Then he came back, more fiercely resolute than ever. Even children could see that the man’s life was a fight. It was like the battle between Good and Evil in Milton’s epics.
Well, after he had tried it four times, the schoolmaster at last passed the examination; and he went away to the city in a suit of store clothes, with eight hundred dollars that he had saved up, to study medicine. Now it happened that he had a brother who was not a bit like himself, but was a sort of ne’er-do-well, always hard-up and sponging on other people, and never working.
And when the schoolmaster came to the city and his brother knew that he
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