Chips Off the Old Benchley
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CHIPS OFF
THE OLD BENCHLEY
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BY
Robert Benchley
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About this Ebook
Chips Off
the Old Benchley
by Robert Benchley
(1889-1945)
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Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist, actor, and drama critic. His main persona, that of a slightly confused, ineffectual, socially awkward bumbler, served in his essays and short films to gain him the sobriquet “the humorist’s humorist.” The character allowed him to comment brilliantly on the world’s absurdities. (—Encyclopedia Britannica)
Benchley's humor influenced and inspired many humorists and filmmakers, among them E. B. White, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Horace Digby, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, and Dave Barry.
Benchley is best remembered for his contributions to periodicals such as Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. Collections of these essays and articles stand today as tribute to his brilliance.
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Contents first published in various periodicals 1915 ~ 1936. Book collection Chips Off the Old Benchley first published 1949.
This ebook was created by E.C.M. for MobileRead.com, January 2016.
This ebook may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.
The text of this book is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less.
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Text was obtained from the Internet Archive (scan of the 1949 first edition from publisher Harper & Brothers). Punctuation, italics, and diacritics have been formatted. Chapter-end links provide access to table of contents and title index.
Due to copyright restrictions, illustrations by Gluyas Williams (1888–1982) have been omitted.
Embedded font:
(licensed for re-distribution)
“Special Elite” by Brian Bonlislawsky.
Validation by Pagina Epub Checker.
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Contents
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CHIPS OFF THE OLD BENCHLEY Titlepage
About This Ebook
Chips: The New Bone-Dust Theory of Behavior
Bayeux Christmas Presents Early
The Last of the Heath Hens
On or Before March 15
The Menace of Buttered Toast
A Belated Tribute
Art Revolution No. 4861
Ding-Dong, School Bells
My Five- (Or Maybe Six-) Year Plan
Boost New York!
Advice to Gangsters
“He Travels Fastest—”
“Greetings From—”
So You’re Going to New York
Future Man: Tree or Mammal?
Encore
Sporting Life: Watching
Sporting Life: Dozing
Sporting Life: Turkish Bathing
Sporting Life: Following the Porter
Take a Letter, Please
The Mysteries of Radio
Your Boy and His Dog
“Good Luck”
“Safety Second”
Tiptoeing Down Memory Lane
What Time Is It?
Do I Hear Twenty Thousand?
Imagination In The Bathroom
Music Heavenly Maid
Perrine’s Return
Books and Other Things
Browsing Through the Passport
Memoirs
Looking at Picture Books
Old Days in New Bottles
The Lure of the Rod
Good Luck, and Try and Get It
The Letter Box
How to Travel in Peace
Down in Front
Confession
On Saying Little at Great Length
The Dying Thesaurus
Brain-Fag
Plans for Eclipse Day
In the Beginning
Are You an Old Master?
Bird Lore
The United States Senate Chamber
The First Pigeon of Spring
Vox Populi
“Why I Am Pale”
My Own Arrangement
Hey, Waiter!
How to Get Things Done
Morale in Banking
The Questionnaire Craze
Home Sweet Home
Literary Notes
The Correspondent-School Linguist
Learn to Write
Knowing the Flowers
A Warning Note in The Matter of Preparedness
My Subconscious
Professional Pride
A Writers’ Code
Doing Your Bit in the Garden
Picking French Pastry, a Harder Game than Chess
The Perfect Audience
“Writers— Right Or Wrong!”
Your Change
Inter-Office Memo
The Dear Dead Table d’Hôte Days
Mea Culpa
“One Hundred Years Ago Today—”
A Word About Hay Fever
À Bas the Military Censor
Why Does Nobody Collect Me?
Index of Titles
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CHIPS OFF
THE OLD BENCHLEY
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The New
Bone-Dust Theory
of Behavior
Is your Elbow All It Should Be?
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A little while ago it was your teeth that were to blame for everything. And now, after you have gone and had tin-types taken of your teeth, showing them riding in little automobiles or digging in the sand, some more specialists come along and discover that, after all, it is your glands that are the secret of your mental, moral and physical well-being.
A book called “The Glands Regulating Personality” claims that the secretions of the various glands throughout your body determine whether you are a good or a bad boy, cheerful or agile, Republican or Democrat. Anyone singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” does not face the facts squarely. The words should go: “For he has jolly good glandular secretions, which nobody will deny.”
In order to be at least two jumps ahead of the game, we are prepared to set forward another theory to take the place of the gland theory when that shall have become scratched. All enthusiasts who want to keep abreast of the times, will dip right into ours now; so that when the time comes they will be able to talk intelligently on the subject.
Briefly, the facts are these:
This wonderful body which Nature has given us is made up of just dozens and dozens of bones. Oh, so many bones! If you were to start counting now and should count bones until Daddy came home to supper, you would have counted only seven or eight of them, because it is almost time for Daddy now.
In the course of time, as we go about doing our daily work, these bones rub against one another, especially in the joints. It is true that Nature has provided little cups for the bones to fit into so that they will not rub, but what good are they? None. Of all the bungling, slipshod jobs that Nature has done (and she has done a great many in her day) the friction of one bone upon another in the human form is among the worst. The truth about this has only just begun to come out.
Now, in this constant rubbing, due to people’s constantly running up and down stairs, or prancing to keep warm, or jouncing babies on their knees, it is only to be expected that a quantity of bone-dust should be gradually worn off from the bones. You can’t blame the bones. It’s just one of those things that are bound to happen.
This bone-dust, once it is set loose, has no place to go except to swirl along in circulation with the blood. You are either a part of a b
one or you are a part of the circulation of the blood. There is no middle course. And it is this visiting bone-dust, tearing about through one’s system, that determines whether or not one is to be a criminal member of society or a pianist.
For example, the joints which shed criminal-breeding bone-dust are the elbow and knee. If dust from these predominates in your system (in other words, if you bend your elbows and knees more than you bend your fingers) you will have a tendency to steal little things or perhaps kill slightly. Dark circles will appear under your eyes and your friends will begin to shun you. You will be embarrassed when called upon to meet the president of the company and will, in all probability, have no speaking voice.
A very wealthy society woman, known to all of you by name, was brought to this office for treatment for stealing trinkets from Tiffany’s. Ten years ago she would have been sent to a sanitarium as an incurable kleptomaniac. She was questioned about her reflexes and it was found that she was accustomed to bend her elbow constantly, just for the fun of the thing. A transfusion was made of the bone-dust of a young wolf who had no elbows, and in a few weeks the patient was as good as new. She has never had a recurrence of her throat trouble.
Thus it will be seen that the basis of our whole social structure today lies in the friction of the bones in our body and probably will lie there until Fall, when something else will be found to take the blame.
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....... TOC INDEX NEXT
Bayeux
Christmas Presents
Early
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It seems rather strange that, in the very year which marks the nine hundredth anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror, a strip of Bayeux tapestry should have been discovered in Bayeux, New Jersey, depicting the passage of that hero across the Channel. It seems so strange, in fact, that the police are investigating the matter.
The tapestry, it is alleged by the defense, shows four of the Conqueror’s ships in mid-Channel. There seems to be some doubt among authorities as to the direction in which the ships are going – to or from Albion. We incline to the theory that they are on their way back to France. There must have been at least four boat-loads of Normans who were disappointed in England and who turned right around and went home.
Or, if we must be seasonal, we may hold to the theory that they are on their way back to Normandy for the Christmas holidays. Can you imagine the bustle and din there must have been in William’s household along about December 20th of the first Christmas week following the landing? “Going home for Christmas?” must have been the question on all lips framed in probably the worst Norman-English ever heard. “Noël,” they probably called it. The old oaken bucket that hung in Noël – to put it badly.
Any study of a Bayeux tapestry is made difficult by the fact that the old weavers were such bum draftsmen. They may have known how to work looms but they couldn’t draw for a darn. There is no way of telling from the tapestry whether or not William himself was aboard one of the ships, because all the men look alike, if you can even call it that. The man in the middle boat, the one bunking up with a horse, might be William, but the chances are against it. He is evidently so sick that he doesn’t care who he is. He is making a mental resolution that, rather than cross this Channel again, he will spend the rest of his life in Normandy, or wherever it is he is headed for.
The little boat, which seems to be hanging in mid-air, is really, they tell us, in the distance. Its occupants are having a rather thin time of it and are evidently considering being ill, too. On the whole, the entire expedition would have done better never to have left land.
A word about the figureheads on the two ships which have them. The one on the boat at the extreme right would indicate that it is going in the opposite direction from the rest of the fleet, or else that somebody made an awful blunder in assembling the ship. It is on the stern, as near as we can figure it out, although the two boys amidships who are humming together confuse things by facing in opposite directions themselves. Judged merely as figureheads neither one is worth much, although we like the one on the right better than the big one at the left because the latter looks as if the designer had tried to be funny.
We gather that there was some vague idea of having the great black things held by the pilots look like rudders. Well, they don’t – and that goes for the whole tapestry, too.
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PREV TOC INDEX NEXT
The Last
of the Heath Hens
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Well, the Heath Hen has gone! We might as well face it. The sole surviving specimen of Tympanuchus cupido, which has been hopping and flitting about the island of Martha’s Vineyard for the past few years under the fascinated gaze of the ornithologists, has disappeared, and, it is feared, has died without issue. It was not enough that the world should be tottering, its reason going, its standards gone. The Heath Hen must be taken from us.
We knew that it would have to happen sometime, but it is hard to believe that there will never be another Heath Hen. We didn’t mind so much when we were told that the Great Auk was extinct, or the Labrador Duck, or the Passenger Pigeon. Even the news about the Eskimo Curlews (although there is hope that there are still a few Eskimo Curlews left who are just playing possum or sulking) didn’t give us that sinking feeling that we experienced when we heard about the Heath Hen. No more Heath Hens – ever! Thank God, John James Audubon did not live to hear that gloomy pronouncement. (He missed it by just three-quarters of a century.)
It seems only yesterday that I saw the Heath Hen at Martha’s Vineyard. She looked as well then as she ever did, but she never was what you would call a robust bird. They did not keep her captive. She was too proud a spirit for that. But on one occasion, when she had lighted for a chat with Mr. McKinstry, her observer (Mr. McKinstry was paid by the state or somebody just to hang around Martha’s Vineyard and keep tabs on the Heath Hen), they did attach two metal bands to her ankles, so that if she ever got lost or drunk, people would know that she was no ordinary grouse. She didn’t like the bands, and felt that when one is the only surviving member of a proud race of birds, any sensitive person should recognize one without leg bands. “I don’t like the idea of it, Joe,” she said to Mr. McKinstry on one occasion. “Either I am a true princess or I am not.”
One of the greatest sorrows in Mr. McKinstry’s professional career as Heath Hen-watcher was that he could never find a mate for Miss Helen. (He called her Miss Helen because it seemed to suit her best.) The More Game Birds Foundation was very anxious that Miss Helen marry, not only because it would have made the bleak winters on Martha’s Vineyard happier for her but because then, if things worked out right, she might not be the last of her breed in the world. And it was more or less up to Mr. McKinstry.
But either because there were no suitable mates for Miss Helen or because she rather fancied herself in her tragic rôle as the Last of the Heath Hens and deliberately snubbed any eligible suitors, the fact remains that she made no alliances and was always seen alone when she alighted on the farm of James Green every spring. It made it hard for Mr. McKinstry to make out his report, but there wasn’t really very much that he could do about it.
“I see the position it puts you in, Joe,” she said to him once, “but somehow I feel that I am in the right. I can’t take anybody that comes along, and you wouldn’t want me to. And if the Heath Hens are to go on, they must be the very best Heath Hens, worthy to carry on a fine tradition. And you don’t know this Martha’s Vineyard riffraff as I do.”
And with that (according to Mr. McKinstry) she waddled into a thicket and wasn’t seen again for weeks. Mr. McKinstry thinks that she spent a lot of her time in day-dreaming and was really close at hand when she was supposed to be off on a tour of the island. It was also his idea that she had an independent income and kept to herself out of choice. When you are the Sole Surviving Specimen, you have a certain dignity to maintain.
And now she is gone. Spring has broken through again and no Heath He
n has come to James Green’s farm. Somewhere on the hard-bitten ground of Martha’s Vineyard Miss Helen lies in state, with two metal bands about her patrician ankles, and her proud spirit wings its way to the home of all those other Heath Hens who went before. We need sound no mournful tone for Miss Helen, for she kept her name unsullied to the end and her fame is secure on the records of ornithological royalty. But what, what is to become of Mr. McKinstry?
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On or Before
March 15
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I realize that this is a fine time to be worrying about the Income Tax, a whole week after the returns were supposed to be in, but I am afraid that I shall have to be a little late this year in filing mine. Nobody regrets it more than I do and I want the officials to know that I am bending every effort to get the thing in just as soon as possible.
But I have struck several snags and my pencil keeps breaking and often I get so confused that I have to go and lie down, and all this takes time. I will get the return in. They needn’t worry. But I won’t be hurried. March 15th! March 15th! You would think to hear them screaming “March 15th” at you that there was no other date on the calendar. Well, I’ll get mine in on or about March 28th or 29th, and they’ll like it. I should think that they’d be busy enough in the tax offices messing around with the returns that did come in on time, so that they wouldn’t have to have mine right away. Anyway, they’re not going to get it.