Further Foolishness by Stephen Leacock (win 10 ebook reader txt) 📖
- Author: Stephen Leacock
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FURTHER FOOLISHNESS Sketches and Satires on The Follies of The Day By Stephen Leacock
PREFACE
Many years ago when I was a boy at school, we had over our class an ancient and spectacled schoolmaster who was as kind at heart as he was ferocious in appearance, and whose memory has suggested to me the title of this book.
It was his practice, on any outburst of gaiety in the class-room, to chase us to our seats with a bamboo cane and to shout at us in defiance:
Now, then, any further foolishness?I find by experience that there are quite a number of indulgent readers who are good enough to adopt the same expectant attitude towards me now.
STEPHEN LEACOCKMcGILL UNIVERSITY MONTREAL
November 1, 1916
CONTENTS
PREFACE
FOLLIES IN FICTION
I. Stories Shorter Still
CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY
II. Snoopopaths; or, Fifty Stories in One
III. Foreign Fiction in Imported Instalments.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
Movies and Motors, Men and Women
(II) THE MINISTER WHOSE CHURCH HE ATTENDS
(III) HIS PARTNER AT BRIDGE
(IV) HIS HOSTESS AT DINNER
(III)
X. A Study in Still Life—My Tailor
Peace, War, and Politics
XI. Germany from Within Out
XIII. In Merry Mexico
XIV. Over the Grape Juice; or, The Peacemakers
XV. The White House from Without In
Timid Thoughts on Timely Topics
XVI. Are the Rich Happy?
XVII. Humour as I See It
Follies in Fiction
I. Stories Shorter Still
Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.
(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORYHANGED BY A HAIR OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED
The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.
It was therefore time to call in the great detective.
He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope.
"Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."
He held up the hair.
"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands."
The inexorable chain of logic was complete.
The detective set himself to the search.
For four days and nights he moved, unobserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he passed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.
On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears. The man was about to go on board the Gloritania.
The detective followed him on board.
"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.
"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his guilt."
"Remove his hat," said the ship's captain sternly.
They did so.
The man was entirely bald.
"Ha!" said the great detective without a moment of hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about a million."
(II) A COMPRESSED OLD ENGLISH NOVEL SWEARWORD THE UNPRONOUNCEABLE
CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY
"Ods bodikins!" exclaimed Swearword the Saxon, wiping his mailed brow with his iron hand, "a fair morn withal! Methinks twert lithlier to rest me in yon glade than to foray me forth in yon fray! Twert it not?"
But there happened to be a real Anglo-Saxon standing by.
"Where in heaven's name," he said in sudden passion, "did you get that line of English?"
"Churl!" said Swearword, "it is Anglo-Saxon."
"You're a liar!" shouted the Saxon, "it is not. It is
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