Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock (the two towers ebook txt) 📖
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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LITERARY LAPSES By Stephen Leacock
CONTENTS
LITERARY LAPSES
My Financial Career
Lord Oxhead's Secret
Boarding-House Geometry
The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones
A Christmas Letter
How to Make a Million Dollars
How to Live to be 200
How to Avoid Getting Married
How to be a Doctor
The New Food
A New Pathology
The Poet Answered
The Force of Statistics
Men Who have Shaved Me
Getting the Thread of It
Telling His Faults
Winter Pastimes
Number Fifty-Six
Aristocratic Education
The Conjurer's Revenge
Hints to Travellers
A Manual of Education
Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas
The Life of John Smith
On Collecting Things
Society Chat-Chat
Insurance up to Date
Borrowing a Match
A Lesson in Fiction
Helping the Armenians
A Study in Still Life.—The Country Hotel
An Experiment With Policeman Hogan
The Passing of the Poet
Self-made Men
A Model Dialogue
Back to the Bush
Reflections on Riding
Saloonio
Half-hours with the Poets
PART I
PART II
PART III
A, B, and C
Acknowledgments
LITERARY LAPSES
My Financial Career
When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.
The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.
I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.
So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.
I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.
"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly, "alone." I don't know why I said "alone."
"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.
The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.
"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.
"Yes," he said.
"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say "alone" again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.
The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.
"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.
"We are safe from interruption here," he said; "sit down."
We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.
"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.
He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.
"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.
"To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, "I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank."
The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.
"A large account, I suppose," he said.
"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly."
The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.
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