Pluck and Luck Read online

  This goes on for some time, a line of grown-ups stepping up and waving some new inanity in Stephen’s face and saying, “Oh, look, ’Teven!” (Another one calling him “’Teven” is going to get a good swift bust in the face) and then retiring to play with it themselves.

  There are two things left in the world that Stephen wants to do. One is to try pinching those lights. And the other is to finish slipping the old iron washer over the stem of the Ingersoll. The lights are out of the question now, but not the washer. All you have to do is crawl very quietly up the stairs and down the hall (the mechanical toys are making so much noise that no one will notice you) and there, on the floor, is the best little toy that God ever made. That, man, is a toy!

  And now to get down to work with it. After all, Christmas was meant for the grown-ups. The rest of us have things to do.

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  Article on Fishing

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  Along about the time when the first crocuses are getting frozen for having popped out too soon (and, by the way, you might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it) the old lure of the rubber-boot begins to stir, and Fred and I begin to say, “remember that time—?” From then on the decensus is facilis, unless you know what I mean.

  Out come the rods from the attic, and several evenings are spent in fingering over the cards bearing the remnants of last season’s Silver Doctors, Jolly Rogers, Golden Bantams, or whatever they are called. Inveterate fisherman that I am, I have never been able to take seriously the technical names for flies. It is much simpler to refer to them as “this one” and “that one” and is less embarrassing if you happen to be self-conscious. The man who made up the names for flies must have been thwarted in a life-long desire to have children, and at last found that outlet for his suppressed baby-talk.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” says Fred, “I could get off for about ten days and perhaps we could run up to Rippling Creek.”

  “If you can get off as easy as that for ten days to run up to any place,” says Mrs. Fred, “you can run up to the attic and put up that partition around the trunk-room. The boards have been lying up there ready since last October.”

  “Who said I could get off for ten days?” replies Fred, hotly. “I said I might be able to get off for a day or two. I don’t know. I doubt very much if I could make it.”

  So Fred doesn’t go on the trip.

  But there are three or four of us who do, and we start to leave about four weeks before the train is ready. George has to buy some new flannel shirts. These are tricky things to buy, and you have to get them far enough ahead so that if they don’t fit right around the neck you can change them. It is important that they fit right round the neck, because you’d hate to have Jo Rapusi, the Pollack who takes care of the shack, see you with a badly-fitting shirt. George buys half a dozen shirts and wears one the whole time he is away.

  Eddie needs rubber-boots. His old ones have no feet to them and can be used only as leggings. So we all have to go with Eddie while he tries on a new pair. We sit around in the bootery and watch him galumph up and down a strip of carpet, giving him advice on the various styles which the clerk brings out.

  “How are these?” asks Eddie, a little proudly, stepping off in a pair into which he has not quite got his right foot, with the result that he is thrown heavily to one side as it buckles under his weight. “They’re fine, Eddie,” we say, “only watch out for that right one. It’s got a nasty canter.”

  “The fish will hear you coming in those, Eddie,” is another hot one. “You ought to wear them on your hands.”

  This sort of thing takes quite a time, because it has to be done well if you are doing it at all. There is just enough time left to go and see about the liquid bait which Mac is getting from the door-man at the club in three portable cases, and to sample it, and then it is almost midnight, and we are due to leave on the trip in four days.

  These days are spent in making enemies among our friends by talking about what we are going to do.

  “Well, you poor sons-of-guns can think of us a week from today, wading down the stream after a nice big baby with round blue eyes,” we say. “And when we get him all nice and slit up and fried in butter, we’ll stop and think of you before we eat him and maybe drink a silent toast to the goofs at home.”

  “’At’s fine!” say our friends. And then they start a petition around among the other members of the club to have us locked up in the steam-room until August.

  The day for the Big Departure comes around and Eddie finds that, at the last minute, he can’t make the grade. He uses his new rubber boots to plant bay-trees in, one at each corner of his driveway. The rest of us get started, loaded down with rods and baskets, blankets and flasks, and seven knives to cut fish with (on reaching the camp next day, it is found that no one in the party has a knife).

  There is a great deal of singing on the way up. The line-up consists of five tenors and one voice to carry the air. This gives a rich, fruity effect which necessitates each song’s being sung through twenty-five times, exclusive of the number of times we sing it after we have returned to town, to remind one another of what a good time we had singing it on the trip.

  There is also considerable talk about what we are going to do with the extra fish. Roberts is going to send his home to his brother’s family. They love fish. It turns out, oddly enough, that Mac’s father (who lives in Wisconsin) also loves fish, and Mac is going to send his surplus to him. He has always sent his father fish, every Spring, and it seems to be the only thing that has kept the old man alive. Mac says that he has never known such a grand old man as his father, eighty-nine and reads the papers every Sunday, especially the funnies. If anyone takes the funnies out of the paper before his father gets them, he raises a terrible row. At this, Mac starts to cry slightly, just at the thought of his poor old father’s having to go without his funnies, even for one Sunday.

  Skinner, to whom Mac is confiding, also starts to cry a little, but he never lets on that it is at the thought of his own father, thirty years dead, that he is crying. Skinner is too much of a man for that. He lets Mac think that he is affected by the tragedy of Old Mr. Mac. This brings the two men together to a touching degree and they decide not to go on with the fishing trip at all, but to stop at the next town they go through and start in business together for themselves, and when they have made enough money they will have Mac’s father come and live with them. The conversation ends in a disgusting fight between Mac and Skinner over the kind of business they are going in to.

  Once in a while someone catches a fish. I, personally, never have, but that is because once I get out in the open air I get so sleepy that I don’t move off my cot, except to eat, from one day to the next.

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  How Much Does the Sun Jump?

  An Account of the Stroboscope,

  the New Tell-Tale

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  The wonders of our solar universe, and of the thousands and thousands of other universes which we now know dot the heavens, were never more clearly demonstrated than they have been by the recently devised “stroboscope,” an invention of Dr. Charles Van Heak, by means of which we are able to measure sun-jumps.

  It was not known until recently that the sun jumped at all. It has been known for a long time that the sun is 92,830,000 miles from the earth (except on Leap Year). So much has been an open secret. It has also been recognized in a general way that the moon is swinging at a terrific rate around the sun and that the earth (our Earth) goes back and forth between the sun and the moon once every twenty-four hours, drawing nearest to the sun at noon and then turning back to the moon. This makes our “night” and “day,” or, as some say, “right” and “left.” Men have also known a long time that if you took a train going a hundred miles an hour you would stand a fat chance of ever reaching the sun. />
  Our own little colony of stars (we call it “our own,” although we just rent it), the Solar System, is composed of millions and millions of things, each one 396,505,000,000,000 miles away from the others. If you will take your little sister out-of-doors some clear winter’s night to look at the stars, and will stand on the top of a high hill from which you can get a good view of the heavens, you will probably both catch very bad colds.

  Now it was not known until 1899, when Professor George M. MacRerly began his experiments with gin and absinthe, that the sun was hot at all. One morning, after having been up all night in the laboratory, Prof. MacRerly reached up and touched the sun and was severely burned. He bears the scar to this day. Following this discovery, scientists immediately set about to measure the sun’s heat and to see what could be done to stop it. It was during the progress of these experiments that it was found out that the sun jumped.

  How, you may say, can we tell that a body 92,000,000 miles away jumps? And, if it does, what the hell difference does it make, anyway? Ninety-two million miles is ninety-two million miles, and we have got enough things within a radius of five miles to worry about without watching the sun jump. This is what people said when Dr. Van Heak began his researches on the subject. A lot of them still say it.

  But Dr. Van Heak was not discouraged. He got out an old oblong box, and somewhere found a cover for it. Into this box he put his lunch. Then he went up to his observatory on the roof and sat. When he came down he had worked out a device for measuring sun-jumps, the “stroboscope.”

  The principle of the “stroboscope” is that of the steam-engine, except that it has no whistle. It is based on the fact that around the sun there is a brilliantly luminous envelope of vaporous matter known as the “chromosphere.” We are practically certain that this “chromosphere” exists. If it doesn’t, Dr. Van Heak is out of luck, that’s all.

  Now, knowing that this gas gives off waves of varying lengths, according to the size of the atmosphere, and that these wave lengths can be analyzed by the spectroscope (a wonderful instrument which breaks up wave lengths and plays, “See You in My Dreams” at the same time), Dr. Van Heak has constructed an instrument which will catch these rays as they come from the “chromosphere,” spank them soundly, and send them right back again where they belong. Thus, when the sun jumps, if it ever does, the movement, however slight, will be registered on the “stroboscope” by the ringing of a tiny bell, as any deflection of these rays at all will strike the sensitized plate at the top of the instrument and will break it. As it breaks, the bell rings. Thus the observer will know that the sun has jumped.

  The next step is to find out some use to which the “stroboscope” can be put.

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  The Future of the Class of 1926—

  North Central Grammar School

  Class Prophecy by William N. Crandle, ’26

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  The other night I had a dream in which I saw all that was going to happen to the Class of 1926 of the North Central Grammar School in the future, and when, much to my surprise, I was elected to be Class Prophet, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to write down the things I saw in that dream and tell you something of what is going to happen in 1950 to the members of the Class of 1926. In this dream I happened to be walking down the street when suddenly I saw a familiar face standing on a soap-box at the corner, and in a minute I recognized Harry Washburn, our Class President, who was evidently making some sort of a speech to the assembled multitude, among whom I recognized Edna Gleen, Harriet Mastom and Lillian MacArdle. “Well,” I said to myself, “I always knew that those girls were crazy about Harry, and I guess they still are.” Harry was making- some sort of a speech and I gathered that he was running for President of the United States, which didn’t surprise me at all as Harry always was a politician in grammar school days.

  A little further along I heard someone making a speech on another corner, and I looked a little closer and saw that it was Beatrice Franley, who was making a speech against the use of face-powder by girls. It seemed that Prohibition had been done away with but that Beatrice was trying to get an amendment to the Constitution preventing girls from using face-powder. “Well,” I said to myself, “back in North Central, Beatrice was always rabid on the subject of girls using face-powder and she doesn’t seem to have lost it even in 1950.” Listening to Beatrice were George Delmot, Bertram Posner and Mary Alley.

  A little further along I came to a big sign which said: “William Nevin and Gertrude Dolby, Ice-Cream Parlor,” and I remembered that when they were in school William and Gertrude were always eating ice-cream at recess together, so I wasn’t much surprised to find that they had gone into the ice-cream business, and it occurred to me that they probably ate more ice-cream than they sold.

  Pretty soon I came to a big crowd which was watching a couple of prizefighters fighting, and imagine my surprise to find out that the prizefighters were Louis Wrentham and George DuGrasse, who had evidently gone in for prizefighting. The referee was Mr. Ranser, our old algebra teacher, and I guessed that he would give the decision to George, as George always was a favorite of his and probably still was.

  In a little while I found myself in England, and there I was told that Walter Dodd had been made King of England because he always dressed like a dude in school, and that he had married Miriam Friedburg and had made her Queen of England. The Prince of Wales had fallen off his horse so often that the English people had elected Philip Wasserman to be Prince because he was so good at using ponies in high-school Latin.

  In France I found that George Disch, Harry Petro, John Walters, Robert Dimmock, Edwin LeFavre and Eddie Matsdorf were working in a café together and that Mary Duggan, Louise Creamer, Margaret Penny and Freda Bertel were constant customers. In Germany, Albert Vogle had been chosen Kaiser because he was so bossy.

  On the boat coming back I saw William Debney, Stella Blum, Arthur Crandall, Noble MacOnson and Henry Bostwick, all looking older than they did in North Central, but evidently prosperous, and just as I landed in America I woke up and realized that it had all been nothing but a dream.

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  In the Beginning

  Thoughts on Starting Up the Furnace

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  Along about now is the time when there falls upon the ears of the Old Man one of the most ominous of all household phrases: “Well, Sam, I guess we’ll have to get the furnace-fire started today.”

  No matter what Daddy is doing at the moment, no matter how light-hearted he may be, gathering autumn leaves or romping on the terrace, at the sound of these words a shadow passes across his handsome face and into his eyes there comes that far-away look of a man who is about to go down into the Valley. He drops his golf-clubs or balloon or whatever it is he is playing with when the news comes, and protests softly: “The paper says warmer tomorrow.”

  But in his heart he knows that it is no use. The family has been talking it over behind his back and has decided that it is time to have the furnace started, and he might as well tell the back wall of the Michigan Central Terminal that the paper says it will be warmer tomorrow and expect it to soften up. So there is nothing for him to do but get ready to build the fire.

  Building the furnace-fire for the first time of the season is a ritual which demands considerable prayer and fasting in preparation. I would suggest that the thing be considered far enough in advance to get it done right, and to this end have outlined a course of preliminary training.

  For a man who is about to build a furnace-fire, good physical condition and mental poise are absolutely essential. I knew a man once who had been up late every night during the week preceding his ordeal in the cellar and as a result was tired and nervous when the day came. Furthermore, he had neglected his diet in the matter of proteids, so that his system was in rather poor shape. When confronted with the strain of getting the kindling going and putting the coal on, he simply
went all to pieces and when they found him he was kicking and screaming in the bins, trying to burrow his way through the pile of pea-coal in the corner of the cellar. They caught him just in time, otherwise he might have succeeded and would probably never have been found.

  After several weeks of rigorous training he will be in fair shape to face what he has to face. If it is possible, he should stay in his retreat until it is time to build the fire, coming home on the day of the event. If this cannot be arranged, he should be most careful not to lose the good effect of his rest, and should refuse all invitations for the week previous. Above all, he should take no alcohol into his system. (An alternative to this prescription would be to take all the alcohol that he can get just before going down cellar, so that he is in a state of extreme intoxication during the procedure, thereby deadening the unpleasant features of what he has to do and lending a certain gaiety and enthusiasm to the affair which could not possibly be stimulated otherwise. The danger of this method is, of course, that he might become so interested and excited in what he was doing that he would set the house on fire, too.)

  At last the day comes. Kissing his family all around and leaving his papers and insurance documents where they can easily be found in case of the worst, he descends into the cellar. It is better to have no one accompany him to witness his shame, or to hear what he has to say. At times like these, a man should be alone with his own soul.