The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks Part 1

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks Part 1

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks.

by Robertson Davies.

Preface.

This book made its appearance in 1947, and since then some of its contents have lost pertinency. Therefore I have revised it, and a substantial portion of what appears in this book is new matter -- though it arises from the ancient and inveterate grievances, enthusiasms and acerbities of the diarist. My Diary is not a work of fiction, but of history -- a record of the daily life of a Canadian during one of the early years of the Atomic Age. All the people mentioned in it are real; all the incidents described are actual happenings. Since 1947 I have met many people -- chiefly women -- who have disputed this a.s.sertion. "My life isn't a bit like that," they cry, shaking their curls. I never dispute this statement, which I believe to be true. But my life is like that, and this is my book.

SAMUEL MARCHBANKS.




Peterborough, 1966

WINTER.

- I -.

Sunday & New Year's Day: Laus Deo was the pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n with which the diarists of old began their year's entries, and I can do no less. Woke early this morning, and thanks to my discretion last night, my tongue was as red and shiny as a piece of Christmas ribbon, and my breath was like a zephyr from a May meadow. . . Wasted no time on New Year resolutions, for I outgrew such folly long ago. Any betterment in my character will be the outcome of prolonged meditation, and slow metabolic and metaphysical reform -- a psychosomatic process, in other words. My only resolve is to keep this Diary faithfully for a year, without cant and -- so far as in me lies (which may not be very far) -- without exaggeration. There have been too few Canadian diarists: however unfittingly, I have determined to fill the gap.

Monday: A holiday, because yesterday was Sunday. Sat by my fireplace most of the day, with the drawers of my various bureaux and desks gathered about me, and went through their contents, throwing away old letters and odds and ends, in one of my periodic strainings toward order and efficiency. Though the wrench is painful I can throw away old letters which were not interesting even when hot from the postman's hand, but there are some things which I can never bring myself to part with. I have old erasers, for instance, which have turned to stone and merely dirty and tear any paper upon which they are set to work, but they have a.s.sociations for me which makes it impossible to throw them away. There are paper clips which have grown rusty with age, but I will not discard them for the excellent reason that I got them free and may some day get some use out of them. There are pipe-cleaners which are not very dirty, and although I have not smoked a pipe for some years, who can say when I shall begin again? There are the keys of a flat in which I once lived, and which I preserve out of sheer sentimentality. There are old Christmas cards which are too pretty to put on the fire. There are three cigarette holders which have become plugged with immovable substances, but which may some day become unplugged (if I ever get a free hand with a compressed-air machine) and will then be as good as new. There is a box which is empty, but which bears the name of a very famous jeweller; I am keeping it in order that I may lend a fact.i.tious air of grandeur to a modest wedding-gift, some day. Therefore I cannot really reduce my drawers to order; I can only throw away some of the acc.u.mulation of years of tousled living. But even a little tidying gives me a righteous glow, and the rubbish made the fire burn brightly all day.

Tuesday: Was talking to a man today who was bemoaning the dullness of his life; he wanted adventure, and it never came his way. His job gives him no outlet for the daring and resource which he is sure he possesses. I am never much impressed by such complaints; it seems to me that most of us get all the adventure that we are capable of digesting. Personally, I have never had to fight a dozen pirates single-handed, and I have never jumped from a moving express-train onto the back of a horse, and I have never been discovered in the harem of the Grand Turk. I am glad of all these things. They are too rich for my digestion, and I do not long for them. I have all the close shaves and narrow squeaks in my life that my const.i.tution will stand, and my daily struggles with bureaucrats, tax-gatherers and uplifters are more exhausting than any encounters with mere buccaneers on the Spanish Main.

Wednesday: Faced the fact with dull submission that the holiday season is now over and that a long, hard winter is before me. A man told me that he had always despised me because I confessed that I had trouble with my furnace; he never had any with his. But last week his "iron fireman" broke down, and he had to stoke his own machine for a day or two, and he had a new appreciation of my sufferings. . . I am glad to hear it. What can a sybarite, a plutocrat with an automatic stoker know of the wretched tribulations of the proletariat? While I sweat and slave in my cellar, bursting my truss every time I heave a shovelful of coal, he lolls at ease in his arm-chair, listening to the soothing hum of his mechanical stoker. . . I am glad that he has been humbled and brought low. Now he will have sympathy with the deserving poor.

Thursday: Lumbago oppresses me; I begin to fear that I shall have it till spring. A man who suffers from it told me today that he always wears a garment called Dr. Zeno's Miracle Lumbago Bodice, and gets great solace from it. The Bodice is an affair indistinguishable from a woman's girdle, without garters on it. I laughed inwardly, for the thing is nothing more than a corset, though no man today will admit to wearing a corset. But the masculine s.e.x was not always so lacking in frankness. A century ago every military tailor also made and sold corsets, so that the officers might present a trim appearance in their skin-tight breeches. I have even heard military historians say that the reason Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo was that the English officers had stronger corsets than the French, and thus were able to sit longer in the saddle. If this is so, the battle of Waterloo was not won on the playing fields of Eton, but in the rubber plantations of Malaya, the whalebone mines of the Arctic, and the canvas deposits of Liverpool. If Napoleon had had a first-rate corset, what might the fate of Europe have been? A solemn reflection.

Friday: Mentioned Dr. Zeno's Miracle Lumbago Bodice to a man today in what I thought was an undertone, but I was overheard by his frivolous wife, who insisted upon telling me about the newest development in female corsetry. It appears that this is a bra.s.siere with rubber chambers in it which may be inflated to whatever size the wearer thinks appropriate and credible, in the light of everything else. This is obviously a development of the idea long used by clowns in skating carnivals, who appear with large balloons concealed in their upper reaches, which they pierce with pins at the appropriate moments. What, I wonder, will the new inflatable bra.s.siere look like if naughty fellows with pins test them at parties? Worse, what will happen if the naughty fellows meet richly endowed ladies who are not wearing such aids to beauty? Imagination boggles at the prospect! When at last we got rid of this light-minded woman the atmosphere for intimate talk about Lumbago Bodices had been destroyed. That is something women can never understand; men have curious fields of delicacy in their conversation which should not be invaded by the coa.r.s.e gibes of the other s.e.x.

Sat.u.r.day and Old Christmas: Twelfth Night, and the official end of the Christmas celebrations, so I took down all the decorations and cards, and dutifully stuffed myself with mince pies and cheesecakes. There is a belief that one will have a happy month for every mince pie one eats today, and every year I gag myself trying to round out an entire year of bliss. I usually stick at June and have never pa.s.sed August. Someday I must bake a particularly small batch of mince pies for this special purpose, so that I shall not need to short-circuit my epigastrium in pursuit of a fine old custom. . . Those who do not eat 12 pies are supposed to be plagued by the Lubber Fiend -- a goblin somewhat vaguely identified by folk-lore specialists. I know several people who might accurately be described as Lubber Fiends.

- II -.

Sunday: An amateur astrologer told me last night that I am unduly critical, and should try to develop more benevolence toward mankind. Today, therefore, I went about beaming benevolently on everyone I met, and was greeted with scowls and rebuffs by most of them. The plain fact is that most Canadians dislike and mistrust any great show of cheerfulness. If a man were to sing in the street he would probably end up in jail; if he sang at his work the efficiency expert would ask him to come to his office for a frank talk. The way to impress your boss is to look glum all the time. He may mistake this for intelligence and give you a raise. The same thing holds true in politics: he who laughs is lost.

Monday: Was chatting with a man who has been suffering from bad dreams, which he erroneously describes as nightmares. As I understand the matter the only genuine nightmare is the sort of dream in which you suffer from increasing dread and shortness of breath, accompanied by pressure on the chest, until it seems that you must either throw off the weight or be smothered; it is at this point that you find yourself sitting bolt upright, screaming blue murder. If you don't you are probably found in your bed in the morning, quite cold and stiff. I have only had nightmares once or twice in my life, and many people never have them at all. Bad dreams, however, are common with me, and I rather welcome them, as they break the monotony of the long hours of sluggish slumber. . . A psychologist once tried to attach significance to my bad dreams, but I did not play quite fair with him, for I withheld from him one relevant fact, i.e., that I never go to bed without having a bite to eat, and my digestion sometimes gives me bad dreams even when I am wide awake. Of course, my nightly snack may merely act as a porter who throws open the gates of my repulsive Unconscious, letting all the bugaboos and hobgoblins out for a frolic, but frankly I don't care. Better a bad dream than no dream at all.

Tuesday: A child asked me to mend her doll today; it has broken up into a trunk, a head and four limbs, like a country with too many parties. I gave her the usual speech about my inability to mend anything, and then set to work. It was a gruesome experience, reminiscent of the scene in Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's romance where Frankenstein puts together his monster out of bits of slaughter-house waste. But more by good luck than good management I outfitted the doll with new entrails made of strong string, and tightened these by winding one leg around for twenty-three revolutions. Now the doll is better than new, for it kicks, twists and squirms like a real infant. . . This evening heard Carmen on the radio, and reflected how hard it was to vamp a man while singing at the top of one's voice. That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel G.o.d to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of verisimilitude.

Wednesday: As I want to get the remainder of my winter's coal in tomorrow, I had to shovel my drive today; it has not been touched since the first snowfall, and this was no task for a child; it was no task for a hypochondriacal diarist, either, but I tackled it with the valour of ignorance. In ten minutes I was sweating freely, in spite of a cutting wind. After twenty minutes I could think of nothing except a recent warning by a coroner that shovelling heavy snow was a good way to bring on a stroke. After half an hour I had what I am certain was a slight stroke, and went inside for a dose of a special stroke-medicine which I keep. It did me a lot of good, and after that I took stroke-medicine every half hour regularly. As a result I finished my drive magnificently and did not have even a touch of stiffness from the unusual exercise. I know plenty of people who would have been as stiff as frozen mackerel if they had done what I did, the way I did it.

Thursday: My coal came today, and went into the bin with the usual amount of banging and thumping. A fine black dust settled on everything in the house, and when I looked in a mirror inadvertently, I was startled to see that I had been metamorphosed into a blackamoor. . . Then I went down into the cellar, and addressed my furnace in these words: "O Furnace (I always model my speeches to my furnace on Cicero's orations). . . O Furnace, three winter months having now gone by and the Yuletide and New Year seasons having been completed I, Marcus Tullius Marchbanks, have purchased all the coal, wood, c.o.ke, charcoal and kindred combustibles that I intend (to purchase, understood). Look to it, Furnace, for I shall feed you justly, but not wastefully, and if it should so hap that when all these good things are gone the G.o.ds still send us inclement weather, I shall cram your maw with broken chairs and cardboard boxes, but not another morsel of coal will I buy. Witness, O ye G.o.ds of the household, and you, O Furnace, that M. Tullius Marchbanks will throw himself upon his poker and perish before he will spend another denarius on coal.". . . The furnace was impressed and roared politely, but there was a faint contemptuous smell of coal gas when I went to bed.

Friday: Read too long and too much today, resulting in a severe attack of the Miseries. Reading is a form of indulgence, like eating and smoking. Some men smoke heavily and some drink heavily; I read heavily, and sometimes I have the most awful hangovers. Tobacco manufacturers, I understand, hire men to make continual tests of their product, and these poor wretches get shaky hands and tobacco hearts, and when they take a bath nicotine comes out of their skins into the water. It is the same with whisky-testers. Well, I am a book-tester and I have an occupational disease, which is called the Miseries. . . To make matters worse, I ate an apple and got hiccups, and was convulsed three times a minute for almost an hour. Hiccups are very funny to everyone but the man who has them. To have the Miseries and hiccups together is to drain a bitter cup. Bup!

Sat.u.r.day: This afternoon climbed out on the roof of my verandah and shovelled snow down into the garden; it had piled up to the point where I could hardly get my bedroom window open, and although I am no fanatic for fresh air it is convenient to be able to hurl slops into the road, or lean out and shout "Who's there?" at late callers. I become dizzy when standing on a soapbox; the roof of a verandah is as high as the Eiffel Tower to me. Consequently I did my shovelling with the utmost caution and paused now and then to cling to the wall with my eyes shut, recovering my balance. Knocked down several icicles and was interested to find how sharp they were. If ever I decide to murder somebody, I shall stab him with an icicle, which will melt, destroying my fingerprints and all traces of the weapon. The melted ice will mingle with the victim's blood, and I shall go to his funeral in that state of profound satisfaction which we all feel when we have done something dangerous and illegal without being caught.

- III -.

Sunday: Pursuing my policy of "See Your Home First" I investigated my heating system today, trying to find out why one room which I use a great deal never gets any heat. I took the face off the hot air register, lay on my stomach and groped; soon I fished up a large ma.s.s of shredded paper, pencil shavings, old bridge tallies, sawdust and other rubbish, which some former occupant had used to block off that room. This impressed me as a very subtle way of starting a fire, and I determined to search further, so I inserted as much of myself as I could into the bathroom register, and salvaged 32 used razor blades, a large piece of stick, and a thimble in good condition. I was now aroused; it was a forbear of mine, Gaston l'Immerdue Marchbanks, who mapped the sewers of Paris for Napoleon; therefore I investigated a cold-air pipe near the telephone, and recovered a great gross of pencil stubs. Next spring I must dismantle my whole heating system, to see what I can find.

Monday: Drug addiction is horrible, addiction to drink is pitiable, but to be a slave of the salted-nut habit is to be lost indeed. Years ago I realized my weakness in this respect, and vowed never to set tooth to salted nut again as long as I lived. But tonight I visited the home of my friend X (a prominent prohibitionist, by the way) and turned as white as a blanched almond when I saw the nut-dish at his elbow. It was obvious from the dry, salty tone of his voice that he had been hitting the cashews pretty hard, and as we talked he ate bowl after bowl of the insidious dainties. His wife (in rags, and barefoot, for their home and fortune had been ruined by his vice) patiently filled the bowl whenever it was empty. Once, however, when she attempted to take a fat filbert from his hand, he struck her brutally across the mouth. I walked home sadly, determined to urge the government to take over the salted nut industry -- vile traffic! -- not for profit, but for control.

Tuesday: There are days when nothing seems to happen to me at all; I pa.s.sed today in a coma. . . But I did read the suggestion of a scientist that men over 45, with physical defects, should be made to fight the next war, in order that young men may be spared. This convinces me of something which I have suspected for a long time, namely that scientists are simpletons who happen to have a knack with test-tubes, but possess no real intelligence at all. The logical thing to do, when the next war comes, is to recruit an army from all those of whatever age or s.e.x who are unable to pa.s.s certain basic intelligence tests. This would be a good way of getting rid of a lot of the stupid people who c.u.mber the earth; probably there would be a high percentage of scientists, Civil Servants, uplifters and minor prophets in an armed force collected in such a way. But if every country adopted this method the country with the biggest population of b.o.o.bs, yahoos and ninnies would win, and I am not entirely convinced that we have overall superiority in this respect, though we seem bound in that direction.

Wednesday: Reflected today on the sinful luxury which is sapping the morale of our country. My brother Fairchild has just bought himself an "electronic janitor", a costly device which, I understand, keeps his house at an even temperature of 70 degrees without any effort on his part whatever. I don't know quite how it works, but it has something to do with molecules and the quantum theory. . . Another man I know has a method of sprinkling his ashes with common household substances (salt and pepper, I think he said, and a dash of vinegar) and burning them again; in this way he never has any ashes to carry out, because last week's ash is this week's fuel. . . The hardy pioneer virtues which made Canada what it is (a nation of ash-choked grouches) seem to have disappeared everywhere except in me. I still get up before dawn -- which on these winter mornings means before 8:30 a.m. -- and give myself an appet.i.te for breakfast by wrestling with my Cellar Demon.

Thursday: Had to do some travelling today, so rose early and discovered that it was very cold; would gladly have stayed at home and hugged the fire, but duty called, and I obeyed. Made the first stage of my journey by car and was thoroughly chilled; as the conversation for several miles was about ghosts, I cannot blame it all on the weather. Sponged my lunch from some people I know who keep a very warm house, so I thawed out there, but I had to go at once to a meeting, the chairman of which was either a disciple of Bernarr McFadden or a wearer of long underwear, for he insisted on opening the window and letting merry little breezes creep up my trouser legs. I must remember to get some long underwear of my own. Then home again by train; my seat was by the door, and three news butchers kept bursting into the coach, letting the Arctic in with them. I got some valuable exercise jumping up to shut the door, but it was not enough to keep me warm. Made the final stage of my journey by bus, which really was well heated. Listened to a girl vamping a sailor in the seat behind. She had hair of a rusty mouse-colour, but she referred to herself as a "red-head" and hinted broadly that she was a specialist in the arts of love. I doubted if this were true, but I admired her self-confidence.

Friday: Woke this morning to find that I had a chill, the result of yesterday's junketing. Managed to do some work in the morning, but by noon it had settled in the small of my back, and I was doubled up like a jack-knife. There is only one place in which this position can be maintained without severe pain, and that is bed, so to bed I went and pa.s.sed several miserable hours wishing I were not a prey to so many foolish and humiliating ailments. I have the less desirable characteristics of a number of great men -- the digestion of Napoleon, the eyesight of Dr. Johnson, the breathing apparatus of Daniel Webster, the lumbago of Disraeli, the neuralgia of De Quincey and the deafness of Herbert Spencer -- but none of their genius. I am a walking textbook of pathology, and I would sell myself to any university medical school which would make a decent bid. But they all refuse to do so, because they think that I will leave my cadaver to them, free, after my demise. But I shall cheat them: I shall be buried with all my invaluable diseases; no pinchpenny university is going to get me cheap.

Sat.u.r.day: A slight improvement in my condition today. I was able to struggle downstairs and roast my back in front of an open fire. . . Somebody told me a few days ago that they got the impression that I disliked children. Not at all: I love the little dears. But I have no patience with ill-mannered, noisy, destructive, rude, rampaging little yahoos and it is my misfortune, from time to time, to come in contact with herds of these, roaming wild in the streets; can anyone blame me if I drive them away with curses and blows? But I love to see children playing happily and quietly, while I watch from behind barbed wire, about 300 feet away. . . Ah, the sweet innocence of childhood! What a delightful thing it is in the young; what a pain in the neck it is in those who are a.s.sumed to have reached maturity! No, Marchbanks unhesitatingly declares himself to be a Child-Lover, but that is no reason to expect him to dandle young baboons upon his knee, and he flatly refuses to do so.

- IV -.

Sunday: Was out for a walk this afternoon, and was joined by a dog; it was unknown to me, and was obviously of mixed ancestry; it was not a Social Register dog. What there was about me which struck its fancy, I cannot say, but it romped under my feet, smelled me searchingly, licked my gloves and hindered my progress seriously. Its most irritating trick was to run just ahead of me, with its head turned back so that it could stare rudely into my face; naturally it fell down a lot because it did not look where it was going, and every time it fell down I had to dance an impromptu jig to keep from falling over it. . . I like dogs, just as I like children. I like to think about them, and I like to read in the papers that dogs have been given medals for life-saving. But I do not particularly relish dogs in the flesh. When I meet a dog socially, with its owner, I am prepared to pat it once, and to allow it to smell me once, and then, so far as I am concerned, the matter is closed. Dogs which go beyond this limit are asking for a kick in the slats, and they usually get it.

Monday: Why is music written on religious or pseudo-religious themes called "sacred music"? And why, under that t.i.tle, is it thought to be immune from the criticism which affects other music? Much of it is the most arrant tripe, but n.o.body ever says so. I once heard of a clergyman who said that he thought that "G.o.d must grow tired of this perpetual serenading"; I quite agree, particularly if G.o.d has a sensitive ear and a fine taste in lyric and panegyric verse. . . This evening picked up an old volume of Hannah More's Sacred Dramas and took a quick look at David and Goliath. All the s's in the book were the 18th century kind which look like f's, and the opening spasm, as sung by David, ran thus: Great Lord of all thingf! Pow'r divine!

Breathe on thif erring heart of mine Thy grace ferene and pure; Defend my frail, my erring youth, And teach me thif important truth The humble are fecure.

This lisping bit about the humble being fecure interested me, for it is the earliest reference to focial fecurity for the Common Man that I have feen. And fertainly Goliath, who waf rather an Uncommon Man, got a frightful fock in the jaw. . . The Sacred Dramas are more sacred than dramatic, just as sacred music is so often more sacred than musical. There appears to be something so overwhelming about Biblical themes that artists -- musicians, painters and dramatists -- who essay them are thrown into paroxysms of inept.i.tude.

Tuesday: Prepared for a relaxed evening, and was sitting happily in my pyjamas and dressing gown (a creation of blue towelling) when some friends dropped in, but as they were pyjama friends, so to speak, this only added to my comfort. They told me that a pa.s.sing reference to my truss in a recent conversation had encouraged them to wonder just what sort of truss I wear. As a matter of fact, that reference was mere pleasantry. Several years ago I read an advertis.e.m.e.nt which said "Throw Away Your Truss," and I did so; to be precise, I sent it to the Grenfell Mission, for the relief of some ruptured Eskimo. A week or two later I saw an ad which said "Throw Away Your Surgical Boot," so I did that, too, and got a wooden leg instead. It was only a few days until I saw another ad saying "Reshape Ugly Noses While You Sleep," which I did, changing my warty proboscis to an elegant Grecian model. At the same time, I invested in a hearing aid ("fits in the ear but cannot be seen") and gave my ear trumpet to a Boy Scout, who complained that he thrust it into his ear until it hurt, but was unable to produce the faintest toot. Now, when I go to bed, I pile all this salvage on the floor, with my false teeth and wig on top, and in the mornings it takes a female spot-welder half an hour to a.s.semble me.

Wednesday: My eye was caught this morning by a statement in the paper that "76 per cent of adults have bad breath." I am always puzzled by such dogmatic observations. How are these conclusions reached? Do investigators scamper about the streets, sniffing? For many years I have maintained that the breath is an emanation of the soul, and that people who have disagreeable breaths are in poor spiritual health. Plenty of people with bad teeth and a dozen diseases have sweet breaths, because they are at peace with G.o.d and man. Conversely I have met many athletes, fresh-air fiends, up-lifters, do-gooders and physical culture addicts whose breaths were a shocking revelation of their spiritual corruption and malnutrition. An unhealthy breath rises from an unhealthy soul, not from a disordered gizzard. For years I have fought shy of any business dealings with bad-breathed people, for experience has shown me that they are undependable, if not positive crooks. But I will trust any man, however unpleasing of aspect, if his breath whispers to me of April and May.

Thursday: A soft day, and I think it must be raining down the chimney, for I can't get my furnace to go. I have shaken, and poked, and tinkered with the drafts, and removed the acc.u.mulation of overshoes from the cold air intake, but to no avail. I have even (I blush to write this) tried a propitiatory offering. I built a little altar before the furnace door, and offered up a bowl of delicious turkey-giblet soup on it, but the Fire-G.o.d remained sulky, so I ate the soup myself and resumed my hopeless poking. . . But I know what will happen; if I go to bed, leaving the drafts full on, I shall waken in the night semi-cooked, for the furnace will rage and roar at 4 a.m.; but if I check it ever so lightly it will congeal and go out, and in the morning I shall be faced with an immense clinker, like a piece of peanut-brittle. Sometimes I wonder why I don't jump into the furnace myself, and end it all.

Friday: A man I know has been so broken by the restrictions on horse-racing that he has attempted to console himself by collecting calendars with pictures of horses on them: he has a very fine one with Northern Dancer on it just in sight as he works. I have heard of pin-up girls before, but this is my first experience of a pin-up horse. . . Nevertheless, I know one Senator whose Ottawa office is entirely hung with photographs and portraits of Holstein cattle. "Look at those flanks," he will cry, as one enters the room, and as he goes on to even more startling intimacies, and as one looks eagerly for an art study of a film star, the realization dawns that he is talking about b.u.t.tercup-Nestlerode Springfilled III, queen of the dairy, whose b.u.t.terfat production has never been equalled. Once a young divinity student visited this Senator, and as he knew nothing of his enthusiasm, and did not understand fully what was being said, he was convinced after twenty minutes of dairy-talk that he was in the presence of an eminent woman's doctor or a libertine of Neronian abandonment.

Sat.u.r.day: Tried to listen to the opera broadcast of Rigoletto this afternoon, but as a man in the cellar was doing something cruel to the furnace, and a horde of visitors descended upon me, I did not make much headway with it. . . Went to bed early and read about Dr. Johnson, a man after my own heart, for he loved tea, conversation and pretty women, and had not much patience with fools. Rose at 11:30, ate a big plate of breakfast food and an orange, put the snaffle on the furnace, and retired to sleep the sweet sleep of the deserving poor.

- V -.

Sunday: Met a little girl today who was wearing a pair of high rubber boots, which she referred to as her Wellingtons, and of which she was very proud. Have not heard high boots called Wellingtons for a long time, and it reminded me of my Uncle Hengist, who was a clergyman and a great hand at organizing strawberry socials, bazaars, fowl suppers, local talent concerts and similar pious breaches of the peace. At all such affairs he set up a curtained booth, with a sign outside which said "See the Grand Historical Tableau -- The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo. Admission Ten Cents. Proceeds for Missions" (or the Organ Fund, or the Abandoned Women, or whatever the good cause might be). Inside the booth was a table, on which a Wellington boot faced a Blucher boot. Uncle Hengist thought this very funny, and his parishioners put up with it for years, although they were all privy to the fraudulent nature of the exhibit. It was not until he became Bishop of Baffinland that he gave up obtaining money by this shady ruse.

Monday: Was talking today to a man and his wife who were groaning that their three children were boys; a girl, they thought, would be much easier to bring up, and a refining influence upon their young gorillas. This is a misconception about the nature of daughters which should be exploded. I think immediately of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, that gentle man who had eight daughters, all beautiful and all possessed of the spirit of tigresses. The poor man would sit in his study at Lew Trenchard, trying to write Onward, Christian Soldiers, or some such ditty, when a servant would rush in, crying, "If you please, sir, Miss Angela has fallen off the roof, Miss Beatrice has fallen off her horse, Miss Cecilia has sprained her ankle (if you'll pardon the expression, sir), Miss Dorothea has shot a gamekeeper, Miss Emily is riding the bull, Miss Frances has climbed the steeple, Miss Gertrude has fallen into the pond, and Miss Harriet is pumping water on the curate!" Such were the trials of that Devon vicarage -- and all caused by daughters!

Tuesday: Everyone I meet these days asks me how my furnace is getting on. As a matter of fact, it is behaving very well; cold weather seems to agree with it thoroughly. I have only to whisper my desire down one of the cold air pipes and it obliges at once. . . But I am having unusual trouble with ashes. Twice a week I fill all the cans, hoppers, baskets, cartons and old hats in the house, and drag them out to the kerb, and even at that I am acc.u.mulating a little h.o.a.rd of ashes in a corner of my cellar. . . There is fireplace ash too. My fireplace has a trapdoor in its hearth which allows all the ashes to tumble down into a cave in the cellar wall. When I remove the door of the cave all the ashes gush forth into my face, covering me so thickly with ash that I look like Boris Karloff in one of his mummy roles. Of course I hold a basket under the deluge, but never in the right place. . . Some months ago I went away for a few days and left a furnace man in charge of things. When I came back the cellar was full of ashes; "I couldn't find enough o' vessels to put 'em out in," said he, in the rich accents of Old Ireland. That has always been my trouble. Not enough o' vessels.

Wednesday: To the movies, to see a piece which exalted the virtues of country life; the chief incident was the burning of a barn which belonged to an elderly farmer, and the eagerness of his neighbours to give him livestock and produce with which to start farming again. But this is not a form of generosity exclusive to the country. I well recall when the Astor mansion in New York burned to the ground in 1896; all the rich city folk hastened to do what they could for the poor Astors, who had been burnt out. Old Mrs. Van Rensellaer threw a shawl over her head and ran over at once with a big tureen of real turtle soup. The Vanderbilts sent silk bed sheets and down pillows; the Van Courtlandts offered the Astors their ballroom to bed down in for the night; the Goulds insisted on sending them a full set of crested fish-knives, and a large salmon as well; the Rockefellers sent their butler with a big block of Standard Oil stock, and a dish of out-of-season fruit. It was a wonderful outburst of spontaneous kindness on the part of all the Astor's neighbours. It is simply foolish to think that only the humble have kind and generous instincts; many a great heart beats beneath a ruby and sapphire stomacher.

Thursday: Rain today, and frost coming out of the ground. A black day at Marchbanks Towers, which is so situated that water pours into the cellar every spring and during the January thaw. There is something about the sound of water pouring into one's cellar which cannot be ignored; I sat by the fire for a time, trying to distract my attention with a good book; this failed, so I tried a bad book, (the latest selection of the Bawdy Book Club, of which I am a member), but even that was useless, and at last my conscience drove me down into the depths to see what was happening. There was no doubt about it; the water was mounting. So I seized a broom and tried to sweep it toward the drain; I was alarmed that my furnace might get its feet wet, and develop one of its fits of sulks. My woodpile was soggy at the base; my window screens were beginning to shift in an uneasy way. For a mad moment I contemplated scooping up all the water I could in a bucket and rushing upstairs to empty it out into the garden, but Reason regained her throne almost at once, and I rejected the notion as unworthy. Fortunately the rain stopped soon afterward, and I was able to go to bed with a fairly calm mind.

Friday: Was talking to a friend of mine, and noticed that he had a strange smell. When I commented on this he blushed becomingly, and said that it was some shaving lotion which he had been given for Christmas. It was manufactured especially for masculine use, and was called (I think he said) "Horse." A number of scents for the male are now on the market and all of them guarantee to make the wearer smell of something wholesome and rugged like heather, or the harness-room in a livery stable. They have short, rugged masculine names, like "Gym," "Running Shoes," "Barn," "Cheese," "Glue," and the like. I think that they have a definite place in modern society. A sedentary worker, like myself, has no characteristic smell; anybody who met me in the dark might think that I was a professional woman of some kind (not the oldest kind, of course). But if I sprinkle a few drops of "Corduroy Trousers" on my handkerchief, it is obvious for several yards around me that I am a man. Business women always use scents like "Riot," "Delinquency," "Turpitude," and the ever-popular "Beast-Goad."

Sat.u.r.day: Listened to Tales of Hoffman broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, this afternoon; Hoffman was sung by Raoul Jobin, a Canadian, and Pierette Alarie, another Canadian, was the leading coloratura; the conductor was Wilfred Pelletier, also a Canadian. Reflected for the millionth time that it is a pity that Canadians with this sort of ability have so little chance or encouragement to use it for the advancement of their native land. Canada exports brains and talent with the utmost recklessness, as though we had a surfeit of them at home, instead of having one of the highest living standards, and one of the lowest artistic and aesthetic standards in the world. . . Going to bed, discovered that my tube of toothpaste was suffering from severe hernia, and gushed in the most unexpected places when squeezed. Tried to weld the ruptured place over the electric stove, with desperate results, and the odour of frizzling dentifrice spread nauseatingly through the house. Abandoned myself to despair for a few minutes, and then burned some brown paper to dispel the stench of failure.

- VI -.

Sunday: Took a dish of tea this afternoon with some people who served the strongest mixture that I have ever swallowed under that name. It was the colour of a spaniel's eyes, and when I supped it my tongue was immediately numbed. I ventured to ask for a little hot water, but it was powerless against such tea; I estimate that a cup of it, poured into a wash-tub full of boiling water, might have made an endurable drink for me, but I will not guarantee it. . . I ventured to remark to my hosts that they liked their tea very strong. "Oh yes," said they; "Tea is no good to us unless it will trot a mouse." I asked a few questions about the latter expression, and learned that what they meant was that they liked their tea so strong that a mouse could trot over the surface of the cup without sinking. . . It occurred to me, in a horrible revelation, that they probably kept a mouse in their kitchen for testing purposes, and I lost all my thirst at once.

Monday: Had a great argument this afternoon with a musician who was angry with me because I said that composers should keep their hands off the plays of Shakespeare, which they degrade with their tuneful nonsense. But I was able to knock him right out of the ring by reference to that tasty opera Amletto, by Ambroise Thomas in which the n.o.ble verse of Hamlet is cast aside in favour of this sort of thing: O wine! the gloom dispel, That o'er my heart now weighs; Come grant me thine intoxicating joy; The careless laugh -- the mocking jest!

O wine! Thou potent sorcerer, Grant thou oblivion to my heart!

Yes, life is short, death's near at hand.

We'll laugh and drink while yet we may.

Each, alas, his burthen bears.

Sad thoughts have all; grim thoughts and sorrows; But care avant, let folly reign, The only wise man he, Who wisdom precepts ne'er obeys!

The stage direction after this outburst reads "The curtain falls on a scene of merriment." The merriment, I presume, is from Shakespeare-lovers in the audience who are comparing this wind-egg and the silly tune to which it is sung with Hamlet as the Master wrote it.

Tuesday: "You should never lie down in your clothes, Mr. Marchbanks; after all, you can see what it does to your pyjamas," said a tailor to me today, when I complained that my clothes never looked as well on me as I thought they should. I had unwisely confided to him that I always s.n.a.t.c.h a nap after lunch. Now I have no intention of stripping for this little daily indulgence. For years it has been my custom to fling myself down as I am, and let the wrinkles come where they may. Sometimes I take off my jacket, but more often I pull it up over my head, for warmth. The after-lunch meditation has been a Marchbanks custom for several generations, and I believe it contributes to the longevity of the tribe. Some of us sleep sitting up in chairs, with a handkerchief over the face; others lie down, wallowing among the cushions. Not, mind you, that this after-lunch period is one of utter idleness. It usually coincides with the peak-hour for telephone calls, and although it is possible to sleep while answering the phone, it is not possible to sleep soundly, particularly if one has removed one's shoes, and the floor is cold.

Wednesday: My mail this morning included some information about this season's Valentines, though why I should be interested in them I do not know. But I was tickled to read in choice advertising agency English that "thoughtful creators of Valentine varieties have not overlooked the emotional needs of the bachelor girl who doesn't 'go steady' but sports the odd gentleman friend. . . If she's still uncertain of her boy friend's intentions and emotions, a Valentine could be found which might provide either an encouragement to the shy swain, or 'no thoroughfare' to the wolf, without in any way compromising the young lady's dignity or affections.". . . In my young days it was easy to short-circuit a wolf by sending him a one-cent comic Valentine ent.i.tled, "The Masher," the verse on the latter being: You think you're a Masher, and all hearts do please, But you might as well know you're a Big Hunk of Cheese.

It may be argued, of course, that this type of Valentine compromised the sender's dignity, though not half as badly as it compromised that of the receiver. . . I see no mention of a Valentine suitable for a dyspeptic diarist whose emotions have been cauterized by a rebellious and evilly-disposed furnace.

Thursday: Another note from the Income Tax people this morning. A while ago they presented me with a bill for the whole of last year's tax, insisting that I had not paid it. By great good luck and contrary to my usual unbusinesslike procedure, I had my receipts, which I brandished angrily in their faces. Gradually the whole sordid story leaked out: they had taxed me both as Samuel Marchbanks and as Fortunatus S. Marchbanks, in spite of the fact that n.o.body has called me Fortunatus since 1897; having billed Sam they were out to skin Fortunatus, but I am not quite such a dual personality as that. When their error was pointed out to them, they did not even apologize for their threat to take proceedings against me, but managed to dig up an item of a few dollars which they said I ought to pay, plus interest. . . The churlishness of tax-gatherers is phenomenal. I wonder if there is a case on record in which a private citizen has extracted an apology from a tax-gatherer? I wonder if their work makes them curmudgeons, or if curmudgeonliness is a qualification for the job? I have received a stack of letters about this affair, all written from the standpoint of a government official addressing a hardened and evasive criminal. The insolence of these herdsmen of The Golden Calf is past all bearing.

Friday: The papers tell me that the sports world has been shaken by a horrible basketball scandal, which surprises me more than I can express. I have for years been under the impression that basketball is a gentle game played by fat little girls who trundle up and down a gymnasium floor with jellying thighs and bobbing bosoms, trying to toss an old soccer ball into a hoop, squealing and giggling the while. But apparently the real basketball players are big hairy fellows who chew tobacco and occasionally accept bribes. . . Not long ago I discovered that I was similarly out-of-date on the subject of lacrosse. My idea of lacrosse is genuine Indian baggataway, with 24 of the most murderous ruffians in town clashing and hacking at each other with hickory clubs and pieces of fish-net. An old lacrosse player once pulled up his trousers and showed me his shins, and they looked like raw hamburger even after 25 years. But now it seems that lacrosse really is a girl's game, refereed by prim females who cry, "Ah, ah there, Lucy," and "Tut, Tut Marjorie" and "Now girls, remember your Guide honour" when hair-pulling seems imminent.

Sat.u.r.day: I often think that censors and would-be censors would achieve more in the world if they were not such ignoramuses. They set up a great outcry about comic books in which crimes are described, about magazines in which girls show considerably less bosom than may be observed by a visitor to a maternity ward, and about cheap books in which some dirty words which everybody knows are set down in print. But today I was in a cigar store, and almost swooned away when I saw a really dangerous book exposed for sale at a mere thirty-five cents: It was The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett. Here is a book which openly advocates fascism, makes clever fun of democracy, embodies at least twenty dangerous heresies and presents s.e.xual deviation in an attractive guise, and it was offered in a pretty cover at a price which any teen-ager can get by nagging his parents for five minutes. Half the tyrants in history, and three-quarters of the revolutionaries, have justified their actions by referring to Plato, but the censors don't care; they keep right on fussing about s.e.x, which they would like to see under government control, like booze.

- VII -.

Sunday: What causes words to go out of fashion, I wonder? Today I was chatting with an aged, but sporty, character who employed many an old-fashioned term in his ordinary speech, and even resurrected such palsied slang as "Yessirree bob!" from time to time. But when he left me he said that he was going to the station to catch a train, and I was jarred by the falsity of this remark; such a man should not have said "station" but "depot" -- of course p.r.o.nounced "deepo," or perhaps "deppo". When I was a lad, and this man in his saucy youth, n.o.body with any pretension to smartness ever called a station anything but a "deepo," and I think that to most of them it implied something fancier than a station. A station was a frame building, painted the colour of dried blood and heated with a pot-bellied stove, where rubes and jays waited for the train. The deepo served such dudes as themselves, and usually had a marble floor, a drinking fountain (out of order) and an echo. In a deepo there was a Ladies' Waiting Room, to protect unaccompanied females from the vile attention of lubricious males. In a mere station women had to take their chance, and were usually heavily armed with hatpins.

Monday: Quite a number of people, I notice, have taken to calling me by my first name: I was hailed as "Sam" this morning by a young fellow whose name I do not even know. This does not distress me; if he thinks that he makes the world a cheerier place by calling everyone by a first name or a nickname, I am content that he should do so. But I wonder if people do not attach too much importance to the first-name habit? Every man and woman is a mystery, built like those Chinese puzzles which consist of one box inside another, so that ten or twelve boxes have to be opened before the final solution is found. Not more than two or three people have ever penetrated beyond my outside box, and there are not many people whom I have explored further; if anyone imagines that being on first-name terms with somebody magically strips away all the boxes and reveals the inner treasure, he still has a great deal to learn about human nature. There are people, of course, who consist only of one box, and that a cardboard carton, containing nothing at all.

Tuesday and St. Valentine's Day: It was warmer today than it has been for many weeks. The snow sagged, and I sagged with it. My overcoat, which has seemed like a wisp of cheesecloth in bitter weather, felt like the coat of a shepherd dog. . . n.o.body sent me any Valentines today, which seems a little shabby, considering that I sent out more than a dozen, including a few anonymous insulting ones to the leaders of the princ.i.p.al political parties and high-ranking churchmen. . . Re-reading d.i.c.kens' Dombey and Son. What an easy life children have nowadays! A century ago a child expected to be beaten, pinched, shaken, cuffed, locked in dark cupboards, bastinadoed and told it would go to h.e.l.l all day and every day, even in the happiest homes. And with what result? They grew up to be the Gladstones, Huxleys, Darwins, Tennysons, and other Great Victorians whom we all admire. Nowadays, with our weak-kneed kindness, we are raising a generation of nincomp.o.o.ps and clodhoppers. The revulsion against progressive education may be expected any time now. Eminent child psychologists are already beginning to advocate cruelty as a theory of training. Is your child disobedient, saucy and self-willed? Shove red-hot gramophone needles under its nails, and be a pioneer in the new movement!

Wednesday: When I was young, Lady Chatterley's Lover was regarded as the wickedest book that it was possible to read, and I recall reading it with a keen sense of the occasion. Copies printed in France had to be sneaked into Canada at immense risk, and sold for very high prices, but somebody left me one in his will. Cleaning out my bookcases today I came upon it and sat down to re-read it, and was forced to conclude that my soul has become calloused by the pa.s.sing years, for I found myself laughing aloud at the more pa.s.sionate pa.s.sages. The tale is one of a lady whose husband is an invalid, and she tucks up snugly with a gamekeeper who likes to use four-letter words in what D. H. Lawrence believed was a poetic manner. But the solemnity with which this romance is invested is too rich for my taste. Lawrence plainly believed that Love and the Human Body were Very, Very Sacred, which is probably true, but they are also very, very funny, and the more long-faced we become about the sacredness, the more the fun keeps rearing its giggling head. I see the day coming when the love scenes from Lady Chatterley will be as hilariously regarded as the death of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Thursday: To Toronto on business. The Royal York was the scene of a Better Roads corroboree, and in the Gentleman's Powder Room I was accosted by a young rustic who had apparently been attending a committee-meeting in a beverage room. He was wandering about, trying to find the exit, but the multiplicity of doors confused him. When I met him, he had just finished an unsuccessful tour of a row of doors which, as they did not come to the floor, may have looked to him like the entrances to further saloons. He was hanging on to the soiled towel bin, lost in admiration of the wonders of the great city. Perhaps I reminded him of someone from home, for he hailed me. "Say, this here's certainly one swell toilet," he cried. I nodded. I did not want him to think that I was fully accustomed -- indeed indifferent -- to such splendours. . . Toronto is a depressing place. Riding up Yonge Street in the trolley, past all those postage stamp stores, dress-suit renters, used car bazaars, pants-pressing ateliers, bathtub entrepreneurs and antique shops specializing in leering china dogs, my heart was heavy. This, I thought, is Canada's answer to Bond St., to 5th Avenue, to the Rue de la Paix.

Friday: Home tonight on a local train. Was interested in its electrical apparatus: when the train stopped the light was so poor that the filaments in the bulbs could be clearly seen, but when we worked up a good speed it was reasonably bright. How was it produced? By the friction of the wheels on the axles? Or more romantically, by the beautiful wife of the engineer, standing in the tender, brushing her thick auburn locks, the electricity so generated supplying our light? At each station she stopped brushing (to lean down and whisper some delicious secret into the hairy ear of the station agent, her teeth flashing the while like pearls imbedded in a pomegranate) and our light failed. . . Whatever the cause, the light was too poor to read by, and I shall write and tell the president of the line that the axles must grind harder, or the engineer's wife must brush more vigorously, or I shall see that ugly questions are asked at the next session of Parliament.

Sat.u.r.day: Have received many letters relating to my recent fearless attack on the Salted Nut Traffic -- that sp.a.w.ning-ground of juvenile delinquency and broken homes. A typical missive today from an apologist for the nut-growers: "Surely you are intolerant in your desire to take salted nuts from us all; the moderate nut-eaters far out-number the nut abusers." This is merely specious. Another writes: "My father, as good a man as ever lived, always kept nuts on the sideboard, and we children saw him eat them, though I never saw him debauch. When I was 21, he took me into the dining room, and said, 'Jasper, you're a man now; there they are -- cashews, brazils, filberts, everything; use nuts, but don't abuse them; the nut is a good servant, but a bad master'. I consider your nut-prohibition plans fanatical." But I am not to be deterred in my war on salted nuts by such letters as these, or the insidious propaganda of the nut-gorged press. I shall not sheathe my sword until we have a nut-free Canada.

- VIII -.

Mothering Sunday: It is at this time of year that I begin to think seriously about suicide. My interest in the matter is not practical; I never reach for the bread-knife or the poison bottle. But I begin to understand what it is that people see in suicide, and why they do it. They have seen too many Februaries; they have lugged too many cans of ashes; they have shivered on too many bus stops. Rather than face the remaining two months of official winter, and the likelihood of a bitter May, they commit the Happy Despatch. The rest of us, the cowards, live on and see the summer come once more. . . Snow and ice have backed up somewhere on my roof and water has begun to leak down an inside wall, to the serious detriment of the wallpaper. Shall I send a man up there, and pay his widow $50 a week for life if he falls and breaks his neck, shall I risk my own neck, or shall I pretend that it is not happening until the strain becomes too great and I go crazy? Canada's high rate of insanity is caused by just such problems. Meanwhile water comes down my stairs like the rapids of the Saguenay, and I shall not be surprised to see a salmon leaping upward from step to step.

Smothering Monday: Yesterday's suicidal mood persists. Contemplated throwing myself from my office window, as so many despairing men did during the Great Depression. But it is only one storey above ground, and at worst I would break a leg, and look foolish. Anyway there are storm windows, and I can't be bothered to remove one of them. What Canadians need in February is a painless, simple, and definitely retractable method of suicide. . . At one time I used to see a man every day who had tried to cut his throat several years before; it had left him with a wry neck and a livid, weeping scar. After making such a mess of himself it was clearly his aesthetic duty to finish himself off, and get himself out of the way, for he was a public eyesore. Failure to succeed in suicide is the ultimate ignominy, but criminologists tell us that hundreds of people try to shoot themselves every year, and miss; inability to concentrate their energies, which brings them to the verge of death, inadvertently yanks them away from it.

Tuesday: Pa.s.sing a second-hand store today I saw a curious object in the window which called up a forgotten chapter of my past life. It was a stove, made of iron which had been unconvincingly painted to simulate mahogany, and it was shaped like an old-fashioned Victrola. Across its front, in bold letters, was the name "Furniola." Years ago I used to visit a house which contained one of these monstrosities; the owners were convinced that n.o.body would ever guess its secret, and they used to explain delightedly that although it looked like a gramophone, and gave an air of cultured ease to their living-room, it was in fact a stove. As the creature was usually white-hot, and blistering, this rarely came as a complete surprise, and I never saw any deceived visitor try to put a Victor Red Seal record of Caruso singing "Santa Lucia" on it. But those were the days when the essence of successful interior decoration was that everything should look like something else, and all sorts of mysterious b.o.o.by-traps were to be found in the best-appointed dwellings. Even telephones were hidden under dolls with long skirts, and n.o.body who was not in the secret was able to make a call.

Wednesday: To the movies this evening, and saw yet another of those films in which a young married couple, for no reason which would impress anyone outside Hollywood, see fit to behave as though they were an unmarried couple. By this feeble device it is possible to slip scenes past the Censors' Office -- scenes in bedrooms, bathrooms and hotel rooms -- which would otherwise be deemed salacious. Why the spectacle of a young unmarried woman brushing her teeth should be considered inflammatory and lewd, whereas the same scene is merely cosy and chummy when she is married, I cannot understand, but such is the power of the wedding ring to anaesthetize and insulate the pa.s.sions according to the Censors. . . The mess concerned a young couple who met, married and laid the foundation for a posterity in four days, after which the husband went to war and faced the foe for a year and a half. He returned to find his wife a stranger, with a baby which looked, and talked, like Peter Ustinov. This dreary incident, which was unfolded at a turtle's pace, failed to grip my attention, and my right knee got a cramp; my right knee is an infallible critic.

Thursday: Travelling again today, but not toward the fleshpots of Toronto this time. Instead I travelled upon a line which, if it does not already hold the t.i.tle, I nominate for the worst in Ontario. Ancient and smelly rolling-stock, a roadbed laid out by a drunken manufacturer of roller-coasters, an engine with the disposition of a love-crossed billy-goat -- it has all these and lesser iniquities which I shall not enumerate. Worse, there was a train-sick child aboard for whom I was very sorry, for she was plainly in great distress. But her mother, like many other mothers, had got hold of a wrong idea and would not use her common sense, if she had any. "There's only one thing to do," she kept on saying, "and that's to keep washing her stomach out." So she poured the child full of water, orange juice, and soft drinks at five-minute intervals, and the child promptly threw it up again, noisily and agonizingly. I wondered how long it would be before I followed suit, but they got out somewhere in the wilderness, and the trainman threw a few old copies of the Globe and Mail over the rinsings.

Friday: Talked for a couple of hours to a group of young people today, and enjoyed myself very much. But I was amazed to find them so solemn; they approached every subject, however trifling, with knit brows and a high moral att.i.tude; they obviously thought that seriousness and solemnity were the same thing. I made a few little jokes in an attempt to cajole them into happier mood, but they looked at me with pain, and pretended not to notice these excesses of ribald eld. . . Met some of them tonight at a party, where jelly-doughnuts made up a part of the fare. It takes a high degree of social accomplishment to hold a cup of coffee in one hand, and eat a jelly-doughnut from the other, and this cannot be done by anyone who wants to indulge in deeply serious conversation at the same time. In consequence many of my heavy-minded young friends squirted doughnut-blood on themselves because they did not approach their food in a realistic frame of mind. A jelly-doughnut is deadlier than a grapefruit in the hands of an unwary eater.

Sat.u.r.day: Was talking today to a man quite high in the Civil Service about the censorship of books and put my question to him: What do the censors know about literature and, specifically, how can they decide whether a book is fit for me to read or not? I expected him to confess that the censors knew nothing, but instead he told me that the censors have a long and special training: first of all they attend a series of lectures on Sin, delivered by unfrocked clergy of all denominations, then they pursue a course of reading which comprises most of what is to be found on the Reserved Shelves of university libraries (the books you can't get unless you know the librarian or his secretary); then they travel widely, taking in the spicier entertainments of Naples, Port Said and Bombay; then they are brought back to Canada, and if they still wear bedsocks, and blush deeply whenever they pa.s.s a cabbage patch or a stork in mixed company, and are able to tame unicorns, they are decorated with the Order of the Driven Snow and given jobs in the censorship department.