The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks Read Online Free PDF Page A

almost any Wagner opera the conductor enters and leaves the orchestra pit in his rubbers. Nor is it nice to take over a wind instrument which someone else has been playing—particularly when one’s pupil has been hitting the humbugs hard all afternoon.
• O F W ORDS AND T HEIR E FFECTS •
    I WENT TO the movies last night and saw, among other things, a film about soil erosion called
The Rape of the Earth
. The word “rape” was so irresistibly humorous to two girls and their escorts in my neighbourhood that I thought they would burst; their sniggers were like the squirtings of a hose when it is first turned on. Some people are affected by some words as slot machines are affected by coins; feed in your word, and the result is invariable. Feed “Communist” into an old gent with a quarter of a million dollars, and out comes a huffy lecture; feed “Booze” into a prohibitionist, and out will come highly imaginative statistics about accidents and insanity; feed “Rape” into girls and boys and you get this bromo-seltzer fizzing.
• O F A DULT I GNORANCE •
    A LITTLE GIRL asked me to read her a piece about clouds this evening, and I did so, although experience has taught me that reading things to children always ends up in an uncomfortable quiz, with me in the role of Marchbanks the Moron. Sure enough, she asked me where all the vapour comes from which forms the clouds. I took a leap into the dark and said that it wascaused by the warm earth meeting cold air. Was the air wet, then, she asked. Yes, I said firmly. Then why weren’t our clothes wet? They are wet, said I, feeling like a man stepping off a cliff. If the air is wet why don’t we drown? Because our lungs are made to stand it. Like fish? Yes, like fish. Are people a kind of fish? Yes.… It just shows where a little child can lead you.… And yet it would be worse to say “I don’t know.” Children never forgive their elders for their ignorance. It is obviously a grown-up’s business to know.
• O F S UMMER ’ S C HILL •
    I T IS MID -J UNE and the ladies of my acquaintance have all put on their summer stays and hung their fleecy ones in the cupboard, but it is still far from warm. In winter I rush to the furnace-room if the temperature of my house sinks below 65, but in June I try not to notice when it drops to 58. I huddle closer into the spongey embrace of my armchair, and when I sneeze I think it must be hay fever. It is much easier to catch cold in Canada in summer than in winter, if you want my opinion.
• O F THE C ONSERVATISM OF Y OUTH •
    C HILDREN ARE the most confirmed Tories I have ever met. Today I heard a group of them boasting among themselves about how high they could count; such improbable figures as drillions and squillions were being lightly bandied about by the bragging tots. I remember that when I was in kindergarten the same sort of blowing to the teacher used to go on morning after morning. I never joined in it, for although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that anyone who can count to ten can countupward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so. But apparently the kindergarten set of today are threshing the same old straw. Tories, that’s what children are, perpetuating the same old nonsense from generation to generation.
• O F W ASTED E FFORT •
    I WAS AT A PARTY last night at which the refreshments consisted solely of cheese, biscuits and beer. This seems to me to be an admirable lesson in simplicity, and the party was a great success. Not, mind you, that I dislike elaborate parties; let the footmen cluster around me with the quail on toast, the caviar and the anchovies; let sherry trifle be heaped upon crêpes suzette and liqueur cherries swim in the zabaglione. I can take parties as elaborate as they come. But many times my heart has bled for the hostess who has slaved for hours to produce four kinds of sandwiches and two kinds of cake, and who is so exhausted by her labours that