Chips Off the Old Benchley Read online

  So much for production. With my financial system reorganized and my production speeded up, the problem would be my world market. Here is where the fun would come in. You can’t get a world market without personal contact. You couldn’t very well write letters to people in Germany and Spain and say: “I am a little boy forty years old and how would you like to buy a piece that I have written?”

  You would have to go to Germany and to Spain and see the people personally. This is why I feel that my five-year plan may take possibly six years to carry out. I shall have to do so much traveling to establish a world market. And I won’t want any of my associates in the pool along with me, either. They will have plenty to do with thinking up ideas at home – and writing them.

  This is what appeals to me about the idea. I want to be given a little rest from all this nagging and eyebrow-lifting and “What about that article you promised?” and “Your account shows a slight overdraft.” I want to have something definite to hold out to these people, like: “In five years’ time I will have my whole system reorganized, with a yearly production of 3,000,000 articles and monthly deposits of $500,000. Can’t you have a little faith? Can’t you see that a great economic experiment is being carried on here?” (This, I think, ought to do the trick, unless they have no interest in progressive movements at all. And, from what I hear about them, they haven’t.)

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  Boost New York!

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  It is high time that results were beginning to come in from that pamphlet prepared a while ago by the Merchants’ Association and sent broadcast to the newspapers of the country with some idea of boosting New York. Presumably the purpose was, as stated, “to get bigger business coming from an increased number of visitors,” although it hardly seems credible that any organization in its right senses would deliberately go out of its way to get more visitors to New York. We residents can get hardly any sleep as it is.

  I thought at the time of distribution of the pamphlet that the subject-matter was not exactly that which would stir people throughout the country to come rushing to New York on a visit, but I didn’t say anything. For instance, it didn’t seem that the news that in New York a baby is born every four minutes and six seconds would make lethargic provincials throw some things into a bag and take the first train to the metropolis, unless perhaps they happened to want a baby very badly. And even then they might have to wait quite a time until a free four-minute-and-six-second interval came along, for there would be a lot of people ahead of them. The Merchants’ Association went on to state that, using a twelve-hour day for computation, fourteen couples get married every hour, and certainly those who get married in New York ought to get the call over mere visitors in the matter of baby distribution. By the time the visitors got around to their turn, they would have automatically become residents.

  It also seemed that the Merchants’ Association hadn’t dressed its statistics up in very attractive form to lure outsiders into town. To say that the 6,056,000 people in New York eat 3,500,000 tons of food a year, 2,659,632 quarts of milk and 7,000,000 eggs daily, wouldn’t strike one as being the best possible argument for coming to New York on a visit. It is hard to imagine a man who has never been out of Des Moines picking up his newspaper and saying to his wife: “Marion, get out your good clothes – we’re going to New York. It says here that people there eat three and a half million tons of food a year.” Or his wife saying: “But how many eggs a day do they eat?” and, on hearing that it is seven million, replying: “Good! That’s all I want to know. We’re off!” If I had never been to New York (and sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better) I certainly would not have been moved to come by such tactics.

  At times in the pamphlet it almost seemed as if the Merchants’ Association was trying actually to discourage people from visiting. “More than one hundred and ninety persons pick up the telephone-receiver every second,” they said. Is that any way to boost your town? Immediately the question presents itself in the mind of the reader: “And how many put it down without getting their number?” Picking up a telephone-receiver is nothing to boast of. How many calls are actually put through? The picture of one hundred and ninety people trying to get numbers every second presents a picture bordering on that of Bedlam as seen from the air. Any Westerner would be a fool to leave his home-town on such a prospect, even if his own telephone has to be cranked before and after using.

  What I am trying to find out now is whether or not the Merchants’ Association has noticed any increase in visitors since the good news was broadcast over two months ago. Perhaps it is too soon to tell, but the summer is when most people visit New York just for the sake of visiting. There ought to have been a few from the larger automotive cities, like Detroit, who would have been excited by the item of there still being fifty thousand horses in daily use in New York, although they are in for a big disappointment if they come and bring their riding togs expecting to ride them. They may not even see them.

  Practically the only item of surefire interest to non-residents was that telling of the two hundred and fifty-two theaters in which the spoken drama is played (cut, during the summer, to fifteen which were available). It is probably ten years since a lot of people outside of New York have seen spoken drama and it will take a trip to New York to convince them that they haven’t missed much.

  But the things that potential visitors really want to know, such as how many night-clubs there are, what speakeasies to go to, and what to do after 3 A.M., the Merchants’ Association omitted entirely from its prospectus. You will get no visitors by telling them how many horses there are in New York, or how many babies are born every four minutes, or even that the 1,584 churches are worth more than $286,000,000. At least, I don’t think so. But, as I said before, who wants more visitors? That’s why I didn’t point all this out before.

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  Advice to Gangsters

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  I want it strictly understood right at the beginning of this article that I am not trying to interfere in any gang war. Let me make that clearer. Out of any ten thousand men you might question, you would not find one who wanted to interfere in a gang war less than I do. Not only am I averse to interfering in a gang war, but I would rather not meet any gangsters socially. “Live and let live” is my motto – especially “live.”

  But I would like to help the gangsters if I can. When I say “help,” I don’t mean that I want to go out with them some night and help them ring doorbells and take off fence-gates. I don’t want to go out with them at all. (Although, mind you, I am sure that they are all charming young men, and that we could have quite a jolly time if we got together.) What I mean by “helping” them is what is commonly meant when anyone says he wants to help – that is, I want to give some advice. Well, perhaps “advice” is too strong a word. I want to make a few little suggestions as to how they can carry on their business more efficiently – and then I want to run like hell.

  I do hope that any gang-members who happen to pick this magazine up in their club library and see this article will take it in the proper spirit and will not go off in a huff. They must know as well as I do that the system can be improved upon and there is no need of being so touchy with anyone who tries to point out a few things which would aid in a reorganization of the business. If we are going to have gang wars, let us, by all means, have good ones and not go around the country wasting bullets and derby hats.

  In the first place, there isn’t a good morale among racketeers. The boys don’t trust each other. If they were able to devote as much time to getting good beer into the country as they do to spying on each other, the beer situation wouldn’t be in the frightful state that it is today. A man can’t buy a good glass of beer for his little boy today without having the fear that the child will be going around the house all the next day moaning and holding onto its head and snapping at its parents. And why? Because the bootleggers, who
are supposed to be supplying the country with good stuff, are spending all their time tiptoeing around after each other with machine guns.

  And this machine-gun racket is another point on which the gangsters could take a tip or two. Of course, I realize that, for a man who isn’t a very good shot with a revolver or rifle, a machine gun reduces the risk of missing to almost a minimum. With three hundred bullets sweeping through the area occupied by the intended victim, it is a pretty jumpy gangster who can’t get his man – or, at least, a part of him. But it is an awful waste of bullets. Five good marksmen with a revolver could be hired for a little more than it takes to pay a machine-gun squad, and the saving in bullets and ordnance would be tremendous. As it is, when the gunmen have to rely on their revolvers, even though five or six of them take shots at a man, the worst that he can die of is lead-poisoning.

  Of course, I am only kidding, boys. You know that, don’t you? Aha-ha-ha-ha! There are a million laughs in me if you’ll only stick around and not get sore. Or even just not get sore. What the hell? Life is too short. Life is too short as it is, I mean.

  When I was a little boy I used to belong to a gang, and it seems to me that we handled our gang-matters a little better than the older boys today are doing. In the first place, we limited the gang war to just two gangs, the so-called “Deadly Gang” (my idea, if I do say so) who lived on one side of King Street hill and Eddie Foley’s gang, who lived on the other slope. The “Deadly Gang” wasn’t so deadly that it wouldn’t run on occasion, especially when Eddie Foley got his two big brothers and a friend of theirs who had a paper route, to join them. But, if left to themselves, the two gangs were nearly a match for each other. And some very pretty mêlées took place, too. I think that, man to man, more of our boys actually faced each other in open battle than the boys today do. Automobiles weren’t so common then, so we couldn’t sneak up, throw an icy snowball at a single opponent, and then drive away. And somehow I rather doubt if we would have done it if we could. Or perhaps I am just getting sentimental about it.

  Each gang had one leader and only one leader (if possible in long pants or, at any rate, overalls) and that leader, so long as he led the charges himself and was not knocked down too many times, was safe from insubordination. There was none of this “you rat!” or “you double-crossing so-and-so!” stuff. We devoted our whole attention to Eddie Foley’s gang, and Eddie Foley’s gang devoted its whole attention to us. (I have a scar on my knee to prove it, a scar, I am sorry to say, received in a nasty fall during a retreat. We were outnumbered.)

  Now I am afraid that I have said too much. I am afraid that something I have said will be taken amiss. Isn’t that always the way? You try to do a good turn for somebody and what do you get? A long ride in the country, ending in the entrance to a culvert.

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  “He Travels Fastest—”

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  If this year, because of some silly old reason, you feel that it won’t be possible to take the whole family abroad unless the children tend cattle, by no means let this deter you from making the trip yourself. It will eventually mean money in the family coffers, for it will restore that old personal morale you lost somewhere on Broad Street between the corners of Wall and Exchange Place. Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like traveling alone as a “builder-upper.”

  In the first place, you become very good-looking. In your contacts with frank friends and solicitous relations during the past year there may have been some remarks passed which have tended to shake your confidence in your personal appearance, remarks like “When are you going to get fitted to a new dinner-coat?” or perhaps just a simple “Gee, you look awful!” But once you step on board an ocean liner alone, you flip a magic cloak over your left shoulder and become your own Dream Prince. The mirrors in staterooms being none too explicit, there is no reason why you should look just about as you have always wanted to look, for certainly no strangers are going to come up to you and tell you that you are mistaken. If you dress for dinner every night in solitary distinction, take a quiet apéritif (preferably some un-American-looking liquid like anis deloso or amer picon) and stand up a great deal straighter than you do at home, you may even become a mystery man before the trip is over, at least in your own mind. Once, on a ten day trip alone, I even got myself to thinking that my hair was quite gray at the temples and that I had an interesting scar across my cheek. On short runs, like that of the Bremen, about the best you can do is swing yourself into the belief that you look like a man with a secret sorrow.

  Dressing for dinner when traveling alone is essential to this revival of narcissism, but, during the daytime, even your old sport coat with the tear down one side of the pocket becomes rather distingué, and trousers that you had some doubts about even packing take on an air of unostentation which no one ever commented on when you wore them around town. (“The sort of man who can wear any old thing and look well dressed” would be your way of phrasing it.) Leaning over the rail in an ensemble of odds and ends and watching the foam rush back from the prow in determinedly lonely contemplation, the solitary traveler can almost hear people say as they pass by: “There’s that man we saw last night in the smoking-room. I wonder who he is!” The fact that nobody really knew that he was on the ship need not come out until, after landing, he meets the beautiful lady he thought was being tortured most by the mystery of it all and hears her say: “Why, were you on the Ile that trip? Where did you keep yourself?” By then he will have lost his new-found morale anyway.

  But in the smoking-room at night, in your immaculate evening dress (if you had had a companion you would have been told that your tie was up under one ear and that one stud had slipped out) you can become enough of a superman to carry you through at least a month of routine when you get back on the job. It is a good idea to take along a book into your hermit corner over by the bar, preferably some work by Bertrand Russell or perhaps a limp leather edition of Hazlitt’s Winterslow, for, under these conditions your perceptions are razor-sharp and everything you read, if it contains an ounce of inspiration, will feed your personal integrity to the bursting point. Little sentences which you might have skipped had you been dozing by your bed-light at home, suddenly stand out like inscriptions carved on a monument, and you stop and re-read them again and again, saying “How true, how true!” and resolve to begin to live according to them the minute the ship docks – or maybe as soon as you are unpacked. You almost forget that you are the cynosure of all eyes which should be on their bridge hands, and, if you forget sufficiently, along about eleven-thirty, you can allow a few tears to well up into your eyes, rather fine, true eyes, if you do say so yourself.

  It usually ends by your making yourself the hero of an imaginary wreck at sea, on this very ship, perhaps. You are sitting right where you are now, when the terrifying news comes that the ship is sinking. Calmly you slip your book into your pocket, button your coat about you and light a cigarette (or better yet, a pipe). You even allow yourself to become slightly British on this occasion, for British men are more the type. This mysterious stranger, who has been sitting alone the entire voyage (“I looked over his shoulder once and he was reading Hazlitt,” one of the survivors will report) becomes a tower of strength on the sinking ship, encouraging women here, assisting the crew there, and, with a wry little smile, jesting with the children as he lifts them into the lifeboats. If you had not already been in evening dress, it would be a rather fine gesture to go below and put it on for the last Great Adventure, as you once read of someone’s doing under similar circumstances. (It might almost be worth-while not to dress first, so that this bit of pardonable theatricalism might be saved for the big moment.) If possible, without sacrificing too much poise, it would be a little better if you too could be saved at the last moment (much against your will) but if not – then heigh-ho – c’est la guerre!

  If at this point the ship begins to pitch a little and you decide that, since there i
s no immediate danger or need for your services, you might just as well go below and get a little sleep before it gets too rough, you are still aglow with your recent heroism and the prospect of the fine, new life which stretches out before you when you land, and not even a slight lurch into a table on your way out can make you anything less than a giant among men and possibly the next great leader of the world – or, at any rate, the Atlantic seaboard.

  All of this exaltation and spiritual revival is dependent on traveling alone, and is open to anyone who can scrape together the price of a round-trip ticket. Or perhaps just one way would be enough, for, by the time you reach Cherbourg you will be an important enough personage to have the line offer you a free trip back, just for the publicity. Don’t say that you can’t afford it. You can not afford not to.

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  “Greetings From—”

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  During the Christmas and New Year’s season there was an ugly rumor going the rounds of the counting-houses and salons (Note to Printer: only one “o,” please!) of the town that I was in jail. I would like to have it understood at this time that I started that rumor myself. I started it, and spent quite a lot of money to keep it alive through the use of paid whisperers, in order that my friends would understand why they got no gifts or greeting cards from me. They couldn’t expect a man who was in jail to send them anything. Or could they?