Moles on the Legs: should not be alluded to if the fortune-teller is desirous of the continued acquaintance of his subject.
Moles on the Back: are usually visible only when evening dress is worn and should not be mentioned.
Moles Elsewhere: are rarely disclosed until the immediate future of both subject and fortune-teller is easily predictable anyhow.
*
• COMMUNIQUÉ (shot through my window attached to an arrow) •
To Big Chief Marchbanks.
How, Marchbanks:
Good news, Marchbanks, I in jail now. Last week I try awful hard to get in jail. I throw brick at cop. He just wag finger and laugh. I call insult at mayor. He just lift hat. Getting near election time, Marchbanks. I write dirty word on City Hall. City Clerk come out and write “Ditto,” under it. No hope, Marchbanks. Then one day cop look at me very queer. You pay your poll tax, he ask. No, I say, I never own no pole. Aha, he say, you got to pay poll tax. I never have no totem pole, I say. Sell urn to tourist twenty year ago. Come along, he say, and we go to court. They find I owe $3,000 back poll tax. Put me in jail. Ha ha. That great tax, Marchbanks. Friendly tax to poor Indian. All set for winter now. You got money? I not need money.
How, again,
Osceola Thunderbelly,
Chief of the Crokinoles.
*
• CULLED FROM THE APOPHTHEGMS OF WIZARD MARCHBANKS •
Prophecy consists of carefully bathing the inevitable in the eerie light of the impossible, and then being the first to announce it.
(September 24 to October 23)
LIBRA IS the sign of the Scales, and those born under this sign are noted for their tendency to balance one thing against another. This characteristic is not understood by persons born under less subtle signs and they may sometimes accuse you of trying to eat your cake and have it too. You may comfort yourself with the knowledge that they would do the same if they knew how. Your passion for symmetry extends to every sphere of life; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the law of the Libra-born, and “getting even” is absolutely necessary to those with such a nicely balanced temperament. In order that this dominant trait in your character may have fullest scope, you would do well to embrace such professions as the law or the civil service, in which society will recognize and support your desire to arrange things to suit yourself. You are not moved by an ugly desire to overreach your fellow-man; you are simply determined to keep level with him at all times, and as people born under other signs are usually losers in some of the encounters of life you, the Libra-born, must not be surprised if, on the average, you come out a little ahead of everyone else.
• ENCHANTMENT-OF-THE-MONTH •
Your lucky colours are white, yellow and blue. Your lucky flowers are foxglove, violet, daisy and lily-of-the-valley. Your lucky gems are the moonstone, sapphire, opal, beryl and coral. These are trivial considerations, however, when compared with the long-established astrological fact that women born under Libra are exceptionally lucky in love. Do not trade too heavily on this; do not assume that whatever you do, you can’t go wrong. But if you use ordinary gumption, you have a better chance than most girls of having a few recollections to whisper to your grandchildren when your children are out of the room. This particular kind of good fortune does not extend to Libra men; their success lies in trades which mean delving in the earth—mining, plumbing and grave-digging. Whether this latter good fortune extends to the higher flights of the mortician’s art is a question for which Wizard Marchbanks has not yet been able to wring an answer from the stars.
• HEALTH HINTS FOR THOSE BORN UNDER LIBRA •
The sign under which you were born disposes you to almost any ailment which strikes below the belt. Your kidneys, lower abdomen, lumbar region and knees are your weak points. Though in general full of advice on matters relating to health, Wizard Marchbanks confesses himself stumped by this situation, and is inclined to tell you to wear flannel drawers and hope for the best. However, it was not for such offhand advice that you bought this book. Therefore it is suggested that you collect a good mixture of herbs—any well-known herbs will do—and brew them into a strong tea; drink freely of this whenever you feel out of sorts. If you feel ill, the herbs will certainly make you feel worse; when this feeling passes the improvement will encourage you and may even bring you back to perfect health, out of sheer relief.
*
• COMMUNIQUÉ (delivered by carrion crow) •
To Big Chief Marchbanks.
How, Marchbanks:
Everybody in jail crazy, Marchbanks. Jail doctor bring old white squaw see us jail prisoners today. She squint at me through glasses. You got any sociable diseases, she say. Sure, I say. You want be sociable? How much you spend? Don’t know what she mean. Think she mean party. Everybody holler at me. Doctor tell Turkey turn hose on me. This one hell country, Marchbanks.
How, again,
Osceola Thunderbelly
(Chief of the Crokinoles).
*
• MEDITATIONS AT RANDOM •
REPULSIVE LITTLE STRANGER / While hanging about a friend’s house I picked up a book called The Culture of the Abdomen. It proved to be a gloomy work, holding out little hope for the future of Western Civilization unless we immediately get our abdomens into a condition resembling that of the Maoris and South Sea Islanders. These people, it appears, do elaborate dances in which no part of them moves but their abdomens. I don’t know that I would care to see the National Ballet go over to this technique, but apparently it is wonderful for the tripes.… Even a mediocre writer may create one golden phrase, and the author of this book achieved it in the following sentence: “Upon many a death certificate we read the words Heart Failure, but we know that Fat and Gas are the parents of Heart Failure.” What a magically repulsive picture this calls up! Fat, the loathsome Slob-Mate, is approached by Gas, the fluttering, elusive, faintly-squealing Spectre-Bride, who whispers, “Honey, there’s going to be a Little Stranger soon—little H.F., that we’ve always dreamed of!” And then—BANG!
SANCTA SIMPLICITAS / After a longuish chat with some children today, I reflected that the child’s attitude toward humour differs sharply from that of the adult. In the world of mature people a joke is funny once, and should never be repeated in the same company. But children, having decided that a joke is funny, go on repeating it, laughing more loudly each time, until they collapse in hysteria. The mental age of a man might be gauged by observing how often he can laugh at the same joke.
KING OF THE BEASTS AT LUNCH / To an excellent film about Africa, with some of the best pictures of wild animals that I have ever seen. I was particularly interested in close-ups of a group of lions eating a zebra. Now I was brought up on picture books which insisted that the lion was a noble beast, that killed its prey with a single violent blow, and then stood upon the fallen carcass for a time, roaring; when it had thus worked up an appetite it tore off a leg, devoured it in lonely splendour and rushed off for further spectacular mischief. But here was a picture of five or six lions, all pushing and shoving like human beings, gobbling the guts of the zebra; there was no roaring, no defiance and no loneliness. One lion lay on its side near the feast, gorged and apparently slightly drunk. Vultures stood nearby, like waiters hoping to clear away the dirty plates. The lions ate messily, dropping bits and slobbering on their fronts. It seems that life in the jungle is rather more like life at a short-order lunch wagon than I had supposed. I do not know whether to be pleased or not.
*
• FROM MY FILES •
To Haubergeon Hydra, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Hydra:
I thought that you might like to know that I don’t believe the Old Age Pension should be increased. Old age is too delightful and dangerous a state to require a pension. Old people are usually very happy, and they are also subversive and a Bad Example. Let me tell you what I know.
Last Saturday I went to a nearby school for boys to watch their annual cadet inspection. I well reme
mber when I was a schoolboy what an agony these affairs were. For weeks beforehand we marched till our legs were stiff; a sergeant-major with an immense stomach rudely urged us to suck in our non-existent stomachs; we polished our buttons till all the brass was worn off them; we polished our boots inside and out; we learned to march slowly, quickly and imperceptibly; we learned to perform complex quadrilles when other boys shouted hoarse and incomprehensible words. And when The Day came, in an agony of fear we performed these feats, believing that we had the admiration and enthralled attention of our elders. We didn’t know whether they admired us or not; our collars were so tight that we were bereft of the senses of sight and hearing. But we believed that they did.
Last Saturday I found out what really went on among the onlookers. While the boys marched, yelled, stamped and drove themselves toward hysterics their elders jabbered among themselves, laughed, averted their eyes from the sweating heroes and occasionally said “Aren’t the little boys sweet?” Some of those boys, Mr. Hydra, were daily shavers and not in the least sweet. And who were the worst offenders in this respect? Who mumbled trivialities during the General Salute? Who turned their backs and sniggered at private jokes while The Colours were being marched past? The Old, Mr. Hydra. The happy, carefree, irreverent, unpatriotic Old.
Don’t raise their pensions until they smarten up, and show a suitable respect for the Young.
Yours from the philosophical eminences of Middle Life,
Samuel Marchbanks.
*
To Mr. Adam Mulligrub.
Dear Mulligrub:
Please send me at once—
(1) 12 bundles containing twelve different Canadian leaves.
(2) 12 packages containing twelve different Canadian nuts.
Some schoolchildren in whom I am interested have been told by their teachers that they must make collections of leaves and nuts as specified above and it occurs to me that you, as a market gardener, are the man to supply them. I shall sell the collections to the children for 50 cents each, or $1.00 for both leaves and nuts, and will send you half. The teacher will be happy, you will be happy, and I shall be happy.
I do not know why the teacher wants this rubbish. The ways of teachers are past understanding. But she wants them, and I have been utterly unsuccessful in getting any together. The fact is, I can only recognize three kinds of leaf. There is the evergreen leaf, which is easy to recognize because it smells like bath salts and probably pricks you. Then there is the maple leaf, which has a jagged edge. All other leaves, to me, are beech leaves.
The teacher thinks differently. She sent one of my small clients back to me with a beech leaf which she said was from a Kentucky coffee tree. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Two other beech leaves she identified as cucumber tree and black cherry. She also asserts that there are 36 kinds of maple and even 6 kinds of willow, which I had always considered a straightforward, honest, one-type tree. The children who bother me about this talk wildly of the mockernut and hickory. I do not believe that such trees exist.
As for nuts, I believed until last week that nuts were made in those shops which smell so strongly of hot fat. To me a nut has always been a confection, something like a humbug or a Scotch mint. But it appears that nuts grow on trees.
Rush the collections as fast as you can, and I will see if I can drum up any more trade among the Nature Study set. They may be wanting stuffed birds next.
Yours faithfully,
S. Marchbanks.
*
To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.
Dear Dr. Cataplasm:
A physician who writes for the papers says that a slow heartbeat is a good thing. This is just what I have been saying for years, but nobody will listen. You doctors are really the most self-sufficient tribe!
What animals live longest? Those with the slowest heartbeat. I have no figures handy, but I remember hunting them up once in a medical book. An elephant lives to a great age, and its heart beats about 45 times a minute. A tortoise, if my memory serves me aright, has a heartbeat of approximately 22 thumps a minute. When you get down to really long-lived animals, like crocodiles, the beat is likely to be two or three times a minute. And I once pressed my ear to a parrot’s bosom (getting badly scratched for my pains) and I couldn’t hear any heartbeat at all.
Don’t you think you could extend your patients’ lives indefinitely, and make your fortune and ruin the insurance companies, simply by giving your patients some simple drug to slow down their hearts to the speed of a crocodile’s?
Your perennial patient,
Samuel Marchbanks.
*
To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.
Dear Marchbanks:
I can’t go on like this! It half-kills me to live near a man who hates me the way you do! My lawyers say that if you take that case to court it might cost me my shirt, even if I win. I’m sorry I put the skunk in your car. Honest, Marchbanks!
So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll sell you my car, at a sacrifice. It is a Pierce Arrow 1923, and I’ll let you have it for $1,500, cash.
I can’t say fairer than that, can I?
Your despondent neighbour,
Dick Dandiprat.
*
To Richard Dandiprat, ESQ.
Abhorred Dandiprat:
The jaws of our irresistible legal system are closing upon you. It will be my pleasure, when the jaws open, to pick you out of their teeth.
Yours with demoniacal laughter,
Marchbanks.
*
• COMMUNIQUÉ (written on brown paper previously used for wrapping meat) •
To Big Chief Marchbanks.
How, Marchbanks!
You been in West, Marchbanks. I once in West. Went with harvest excursion but not like work so get job carving totem poles for Haida tribe. Haida sell poles to tourists, but can’t carve fast enough so start production line. My job always carve big Thunder Bird on top of pole. You know Thunder Bird, Marchbanks. Fierce face with big nose, like magistrate. I carve Thunder Bird to look like every magistrate ever put me in jail. Good fun. But awful hard work, so every day I take 4 quart pail of beer to totem pole factory so I can rest my mind once in a while. One day big fat woman tourist come to factory. You Haida Indian, she say. No me Crokinole Indian, I say. Then you are impositor, she say. No, that kind of printer, I say. What you make there, she say. That Thunder Bird, I say. What that tin pail, she say. That Thunder Mug for Thunder Bird, I say. Joke, Marchbanks. Always joke with squaw. But she screech and tell her friends I am bad man and talk dirty to her. Lie, Marchbanks. Her man friend get cross with me. Why you talk dirty to my wife, he say. She lie to make herself important, I say; I only talk dirty to pretty squaw. He get mad and make big noise and fat woman screech. When they go away I resign from Thunder Bird job. Artist got delicate nerves, Marchbanks. Can’t stand uproar. You buy any totem poles, Marchbanks? You got money? I need money.
How, again,
Osceola Thunderbelly,
Chief of the Crokinoles.
*
• FROM MY FILES •
To Mr. Adam Mulligrub, Landscape Architect.
Dear Mulligrub:
You ask what kind of hedging I want along the southern boundary of the pleasure grounds at Marchbanks Towers. As a matter of fact I have a special problem there, of which I should have told you. It is at that point that my neighbour, Richard Dandiprat, invades my property in order to take my wheel barrow or my hose, or to recover the ball which he childishly bounces against the side of his house, or to make a shortcut to the bus stop. I have considered various types of thorn bushes but none of them, I fear, would quite fill the need.
Therefore I want you to fill a somewhat unusual order. Will you send to Central Africa for forty small Upas trees, and plant them in hedge formation at the necessary point. The Upas, with which you may not be familiar, is a tree which possesses long tentacles, like those of an octopus; at the end of each tentacle is a sucker of exceptional strength; when any living t
hing comes within reach of the Upas tree it grabs it with its suckers and drags it to the centre of the tree, where it tears off the flesh, and throws the bones upon the ground; it is upon flesh obtained in this way that the tree is nourished. A good planting of Upas will give me just the hedge I need, I think, and if Dandiprat and any of the neighbourhood dogs disappear it will be a good lesson to trespassers.
Warn the Customs men to be careful when examining the plants, will you? I don’t want any trouble with the Government, which would probably expect me to pay for the uniforms of any missing officials.
Yours faithfully,
S. Marchbanks.
*
• LES PENSÉES DE MARCHBANKS •
BABIES AND THE ADULT MALE / Across the street from my workroom window is an apartment which has a bay-window at my level; during the past few weeks a baby has been making regular appearances there, so that the doings in the street below may entertain it. I judge that it is a male baby, and it is a fine, large child, with a solemn and philosophical countenance. The baby views the street and I view the baby. I like babies, under special circumstances, and by a lucky chance the relationship between me and this particular baby perfectly fulfils all my conditions. I can see it, but I cannot hear it; I can admire its winning ways, and laugh indulgently when it topples over, but it is not near enough to wet me; when it wants anything, a pair of hands appear from behind it with the desired object. This is ideal, and I am thinking of putting this baby in my will. I believe that if the truth were known, my attitude toward this baby is that of most adult males; men like children, but they do not like them to be too close. Some barrier—as for instance a wide street, filled with traffic—between a man and a baby, acts as a powerful stimulant to affection between them.