Ashley Sterne Calendar

Here is a little filler by Ashley Sterne from the 31 October 1931 edition of The Passing Show magazine.  I noted with amusement that Sterne’s quip concerning Keats was recycled in his 1932 novel The Devil’s Own Luck.


Ashley Sterne’s Calendar

October 24 — First Confectionery Exhibition held in London, 1842
   Strain at a gateau and swallow a caramel.

October 25 — Balaclava, 1854
   The original charge of the Light Brigade was made when the first gas-bill was presented.

October 26 — Alfonso the Good, of Leon, born, 1155
   It’s easier to live up to one’s reputation than to die up to one’s epitaph.

October 27 — Captain Cook born, 1728
   Cut your cook according to her broth.

October 28 — Browning Society founded, 1881
   England bore the browning, but Scotland got the burns.

October 29 — John Keats born, 1795
   “A thing of duty is no joy whatever.”

October 30 — London Coal Exchange opened, 1849
   All Fuel’s Day

Gray Day on the Trail

I went to the nearby Bluffs Regional Park for a short hike this afternoon.  It was a somber day: the sky was overcast and the scenery along the trail consisted of different species of dry weeds.  It was a sight that only a botanist with a morbid streak could love.

 The panorama of the mountains looming above the suburban sprawl was also a washed out gray.

Nevertheless, I got my blood flowing and enjoyed the fresh air. 

Ashley Sterne Advertising the Wider Holiday

An Ashley Sterne article from The Passing Show Summer Annual 1929.  Mr. Sterne lays it on pretty thick here with very broad humor.  There are a few ellipses toward the end, where I could not make out the fuzzy text.



Advertising the Wider Holiday


When the high-speed, long-distance, non-stop aeroplane emerges successfully from its present experimental stage, as assuredly it must ere long, and becomes as cheap and popular a method of celestial transport as the railway is of the terrestrial variety; when we can whack our money down and obtain a ticket for Borneo or Barbados in the same matter-of-fact way as we now book to Bournemouth or Barmouth; when, in short, at the traveling-rate of 300 miles per hour, we can get so far away from this extraordinary Land of Hope deferred and Dora as 4000 miles in the same time as it now takes to travel by train from London to Aberdeen; then will be the opportunity to plan our summer holiday on lines entirely different from those to which we have been accustomed.

We shall be able not only to “think imperially,” but universally, too, on this most important matter, instead of being restricted, as we are for the time being, merely to pondering it provincially.

Those of us who yearn for the exotic delights of the Southern Seas will then be no longer required to put up with Southbourn as a substitute; nor will those of us who pine for the Tortugas be compelled to rest content with Torquay.

Practically any place on the surface of the globe will be as readily accessible to us as any other; and verily shall we be able to exclaim with Mr. Gow, Mr. Sweeting, and Mr. Sam Isaacs, “The world is mine oyster.”

And then, during the holiday months, what curious reading the apartments-to-let and boarding-house and hotel announcements in the daily papers will make!  For I think that it may safely be assumed that holiday-resort landladies will prove ultimately to be pretty much of the same kidney all the world over, and very whit as eager to advertise the attractions of their establishments and environments as are their sisters who control the stately Homes-from-Home of England.

Never be surprised, then, if, on scanning the columns of your newspapers one day in the not-too-distant future, your eye should encounter some such announcements as the following, which I have very kindly prepared as specimens of the kind of thing which overseas lessors of holiday accommodations will eventually need to draw up for our information.


SOLOMON ISLANDS — Only 12,000 miles from London!  Nice palm-leaf circular hut to let for the summer months.  One room, diameter about 6.5 feet.  Suit single lady or gent. or Siamese twins.  Rent, 25 cowrie shells per week.

Splendid sea view obtainable from apex of roof.  Air very bracing, replenished with ozone thrice weekly by furious tornados.  Plenty of amusements.  Surf-bathing and pearl-diving (sharks permitted); head-hunting; frequent assegai and poisoned arrow competitions with human targets.

Cattle-stealing forays into the interior.  Cannibal orgies every evening, with specially fattened missionary served on Gala nights.  Dancing all day and every day to native tom-tom and ukulele band.  New tattooing parlour just opened under skilled management.  All the latest designs from Paris.  Nose-piercing and ear-lobe-elongating carried out while you wait.  Come and see the Solomons in all their glory!


UPERNAVIK (Greenland) — The Riviera of the Arctic!  Desirable detached igloo to let, standing on our ice-floe.  Very healthy situation, close to famous icy mountains.  Death-rate from mosquito-bite, heat apoplexy, and sunstroke, nil.  Reindeer garage, with hoof inspection-pit.  Admirable cold storage arrangements.  No drains.

Illumination by midnight sun and Northern Lights.  Magnificent sports centre.  Sealing, whaling, gnashing of teeth, penguin-racing. snow-balling, Pole-walking, etc. all free to visitors.

Daily kayak-excursions to neighbouring icebergs.  Special display of the aurora borealis every night.  Fresh blubber, spermaceti, and ambergris delivered daily.  For further particulars write Krakenbook and Angelink, Igloo and Iceberg Agents.


PING-PONG (China)  —  He-Tael Chow-Chow.  Velly plenty nice.  Plettily situated at mouth of Bung-Ho Liver.  Topside lestoulant, sepalate tables, seplate chopsticks, sepalate chop-suey.  Own gong-band plays nightly under dilection of Mr. Won Long Din.

Plivate opium den, fan-tan saloon, and Amerlican chin-chin bar.  Washee washee done on plemises.

Daily water-picnics in own motor-junk watchee muchee piecee pilates.  Palanguin excursions inland to visit celiblated joss-house.  Temple of Seven Sacled Saveloys.  Feast of Lanterns everly Saturday (Extresion Night); make foleign devils laugh topside.  Lesident medicine-man (Dr. Fu Manchu) and joss-pidgin-man (Rev. Too Long Tung).  Evelthing velly chop-chop.  Lite for full taliff to ploplietess, Mrs. Yung Kow.


SAHARA DESERT  —  Fine large tent to let, with use of touring caravan, situated near well-wooded oasis, completely fitted with date-palms, draw-well, camel-park, and praying carpets.  Suit party of ladies seeking abduction, or family with young children.

Splendid sands for youngsters to play on; camel-rides; birds’ nesting for ostrich-eggs.  Exciting sandstorms at frequent intervals.  Magnificent mirages daily, including personal appearance of the world-famous Fata Morgana herself at every performance. 

Arab raiding-parties in constant attendance...

CHUTNEEGATAWNEE (India)  —  Fine bungalow to let…  Keating’s insecticide used throughout the building…  Superb Bombay duck and mongoose shooting.  Tiger-hunting…  Largest stock of human-fed maneaters (plain or striped) in India.

Snake-charming performances daily…  Exhibitions of suttee, elephants, and extraction of Indian ink from cuttlefish.

Special August Bank Holiday attractions, including the burial alive of Yamayama, the world-famous Yogi, upside-down in a barrel of tallow…


N. DAKOTA  —  Stay at the commodious family wigwam, “Big Sea Water View,” under the management of Big Chief Hiawatha (“Roaring Cheese”).  Ample accommodation for braves and squaws. Papooses not objected to.

Excellent cuisine, under personal supervision of Old Nikomia, specially noted for its sturgeon, pike, pemmican, buffalo marrow, haunch of deer, hump of bison, yellow cakes and wild rice.

Flute-and-drum dance-band every evening.  Exhibition dances…  Every facility for recreation: quoits, ball-play, bowl-and-counters, plum-stones.

Outdoor attractions include scalping-parties, shooting the falls of Minnehaha, and canoe-racing on Gitchi Gumee.

Ashley Sterne Getting Into Hot Water

A short trifle from Ashley Sterne, republished on 25 September 1920 in the Richmond Guardian, Victoria.


Amongst the presents I received at Christmas was a most acceptable one in the shape of a hot-water bottle from my Aunt Louisa. Not only was it in the shape of a hot-water bottle, but it actually was a hot-water bottle.

Aunt Louisa always gives useful presents; I still cherish a blotting-book she gave me a few years ago, the cover of which is of wood decorated in pokerwork with a pelican swallowing a soused mackerel. I keep handkerchiefs in it, as the blotting-paper with which it is supplied must, I fancy, have come out of a post-office. It blots beautifully.  Yon couldn't blot a letter better if you rubbed your sleeve over it.

Then, too, I have a gorgeous knitted tie which I have preserved for many years, its rich variety of hues would put Joseph's coat to shame. It's the best pen-wiper I ever had.

I was delighted, of course, with the hot-water bottle. It was one of the kind that I had always coveted—india-rubber encased in a nice, red, fluffy jacket. During, the winter months I suffer agonies with frozen feet, especially in bed. I am certain that my feet could not possibly get colder if I used chunk of the North Pole as a hassock.

Before the bottle arrived I used to take my cat up to bed with me and induce it to repose on the eiderdown over my feet. But this device had its drawbacks, as the cat frequently imagined that my toes were mice. Twice in one night the animal killed my big toe, and after toying with it for half an hour tried to bite its head off through the bedclothes.

However, with the advent of Aunt Louisa's present, my troubles, I felt sure, would be at an end. They were. I'll tell you which end directly.

Now Aunt Louisa has a positive mania for working initials. I remember how it required all Uncle Peter’s tact and diplomacy to prevent her embroidering his initials on the cloth of his billiard-table. Consequently I was not surprised to find my own initials worked upon the red, fluffy jacket of the hot-water bottle.

Anxious to try its efficacy, I filled it with the hottest water I could produce.  I placed the bottle in my bed so that it could get busy putting up the temperature while I was undressing. This latter operation took me rather longer than usual because in my hurry I got knots in both my bootlaces. However, I got into bed eventually and switched off the light.

The bed was beautifully warm. I could have grown orchids or peaches in it.  It was quite nice to feel my feet again, notwithstanding that Charles — a chilblain which I thought I had drowned in iodine some weeks before — suddenly revived and began to tickle me. I soon dropped off to sleep.

An hour later I awoke to find the bed full of icicles and frost and snowballs. The cause of the trouble was, of course, the hot-water bottle. I had not omitted to screw the bottle's neck, though I admit there was another neck I badly wanted to screw when I at length discovered just what had occurred. Aunt Louisa in her excessive zeal had embroidered my initials not merely on the red, fluffy jacket, but with every stitch she took she had pierced the india-rubber cover, too.

Ashley Sterne Hunting a House

Here is one of Ashley Sterne’s clever Gladys Paggs stories, republished in the Richmond Guardian, Victoria, on 25 September 1920. 


Hunting a House

How Miss Paggs Nearly Secured a Home


The leases of both my own flat and the Paggs’s are up soon.  Round this catastrophe has been hatched a fiendish plot to hasten on my wedding with Gladys Paggs.  Now, if there’s one thing a man ought not to be hurried over it is his wedding.  It’s a very serious step he’s taking, and once taken he can’t undo it just as if it were a safety-pin or a home-made sock.

You’d think a girl would appreciate that point, but Miss Paggs didn’t.  She suddenly heard of a house to let, and that was taken as sufficient reason for getting a move on.  I said I didn’t want to live in a house.  I wanted to save up until we could live in a Park Lane mansion, and have a French maid named Suzanne for my wife and a valet named Wackerbath for me.

Gladys retorted that she’d life her wedding to come before her funeral, if possible, and would I just come round and look at the house?  She had already secured an order to view.

“Where is this insanitary hovel?” I asked, as we started off that afternoon.

“Number five Acacia Gardens,” said Gladys.

“Well, I don’t like acacias,” I objected.  “They attract the moth and lightning and hawkers and circulars.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Gladys.  “Did you ever know a house called ‘Belle Vue’ that looked out on anything but a bill-poster’s hoarding in front and a mews at the back?

“Then the drains will be all wrong,” I continued, “or there won’t be any at all, or the house will turn out to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who suffocated her husband with a patent mop and drowned all her children in the soap dish.”

“You do seem to meet trouble half-way,” commented Gladys, and immediately after that I ran into an errand-boy who met me just below the watch-chain.  He had a smut on his nose and a facial affliction that I took to be toothache, but which subsequently transpired to be chewing-gum.  He directed us to Acacia Gardens, and when we got there we found a queue of about twenty others — all men with notebooks who looked somewhat askance at Gladys and myself.  A policeman was at the gate keeping the queue in order, examining the orders to view, and passing the folks in two at a time at about intervals of a quarter of an hour.

Waiting our turn became a tedious business.  It was bitterly cold, and I felt myself catching chilblains in all directions.  Gladys’s nose went red, then blue, then heliotrope.  I sneezed seventeen times straight off the reel, and the man in front of me put up his umbrella.

“I think,” I said at last, “it will be quicker to go home and wait for the Park Lane mansion.  Here we are catching quinsies and pneumonia, and malaria and calceolaria, when we might be sitting by the fire holding one another’s thumbs and masticating crumpets.”

“Never mind,” said Gladys.  “Fancy, if we can one secure number five Acacia Gardens for our own!  Won’t it be worth the waiting?


I was about to reply that even the whole of the Zoological Gardens wasn’t worth waiting two hours and a half for with a blizzard blowing down the back of your neck, twenty degrees of frost in each boot, and the microbes of every disease known to pathology assaulting you at every unprotected spot, when the man in front looked round.

“Excuse me,” he said politely, “but did I hear this lady mention number five Acacia Gardens?


“You did,” I replied, “and as man to man I may tell you that she’s mentioned nothing else but Acacia Gardens at intervals during the whole of the day.”

“Well,” he continued, “I don’t know whether you know it, but this is number five Laburnum Gardens.”

I said I was very glad to hear it, as I much preferred laburnums to acacias.

“Laburnum Gardens!” cried Gladys.  “I must have put the address down wrong.  It is so easy to confuse acacias and laburnums.

“Quite,” I remarked.  “They’re only spelt differently, pronounced differently, and look differently.  Otherwise they’re exactly the same.

“May I inquire your object in waiting?” asked the man.

And we told him.  We opened our hearts to him.  We unbosomed ourselves to him.  We laid bare our souls to him.  I almost took off my boots and laid bare my heels to him.

“Guess you’ve made a mistake,” he said at length.  “Number five Acacia Gardens is doubtless to let.  Number five Laburnum Gardens was this morning the scene of a dastardly robbery.  Old lady found gagged with a Bath bun and bound to the piano-leg with her own boot-laces.  Thieves decamped with a pound of butter, a ton of coal, and the poor lady’s sugar card.  This queue is composed of reporters.  I represent the ‘Daily Mug.’  This means a couple of columns to me.”

“It means a temporary reprieve from a life-sentence for me,” I said cheerily.  “Come along, Gladys.”

She didn’t conceal her disappointment.  Inquiries at the house-agent’s later elicited the fact that number five Acacia Gardens had been let that very afternoon.

“I shall now try to secure a self-contained flat,” said Gladys, as we discussed the matter that evening.

Well, I can give her the name of one self-contained flat she’s secured already.

Ashley Sterne Empire Day Thoughts

Ashley Sterne’s article, “Empire Day Thoughts,” was reprinted in The Week, Victoria, B.C., June 14, 1913.  The original publication was in London Opinion.  My grasp of history is unfortunately too meager to understand most of Sterne’s Imperial jokes and allusions. 

There is the sad irony that the British Empire Sterne celebrates here would be dismantled in the decades following The Great War.  Empire Day, celebrated on Saturday May 24th in 1913, was subsequently demoted to Commonwealth Day in 1958, and is now celebrated (tepidly) on the second Monday in March.



This Saturday is Empire Day, the day when some of England’s youth may attempt to paint the town red in celebration of the even more noteworthy endeavours of our Empire-builders to dye the map a similar hue.

On this day, in many a hostel throughout the length and breadth of our dear Motherland, glasses will be raised — filled with the product of the still more expensive Vaterland — to “the glory of our blood and state”, to the deeds that have made England what she is today; to the projects that shall make her what she will be tomorrow.  Then will our youth be led gently home — in severe cases frog-marched — to wake some hours later to the conviction that to think imperially is a waste of time, while there is still so much good work to be done on the football field at home.

We are not taught to think imperially at a sufficiently early age.  We are expected to take an interest in Imperial affairs at times when we have all our work cut out to get our work out.  It is impossible for a man to give his mind to such a question as, for example, Colonial Preference, when his whole mental equipment is called upon to decide whether violet socks clash or harmonize with green Harris tweeds.

But if from the earliest days we are taught more about modern history and less about ancient, such questions would cause us scarcely any difficulty.  As it is, however, we know a vast deal about King Canute’s throwing burnt cakes into the sea; King John’s lamentable oversight in sending Magna Charta to the Wash; the extraordinary colour scheme in transporting the Black Prince to the Crusades in a white ship; Henry VIII’s offer of poison or dagger to Katharine the Paragon; and other landmarks that serve to indicate the progress of the British Constitution from an Absolute Monarchy to a test for sobriety.

But what, I ask, does the average man know of our more modern history?  I’ll willingly stake your last half-crown that if I were to stop the first man I met in the street and ask him to tell me the cause of the Chartist Riots, he would unhesitatingly reply, “Lloyd George.”  We take it for granted that so long as we can give within two places of decimals the dates of England’s stop-press news, we are at liberty to let the rest of the fruit go bad.

What we require is a broadening of the mind, even though it should necessitate a consequent readjustment in the latitude of our hats.  And this can only be brought about by a thorough spring-cleaning of our old systems.

With this end in view I have devised a short primer which covers the principal events in the story of our Empire, commencing with the capture of Ireland from the Nationalist, and culminating in the publication of the Half-Seas-Over Edition of the Daily Mail.  It shows how Columbus fitted out regardless of expense, and told to discover Canada under pain of having his licence endorsed.  I go on to tell the story of how Mr. Keir Hardie found India as she really isn’t.  For the first time in any history book I relate how G. L. Jessop, having thoroughly demoralized the dream of British trundlers, set out for fresh worlds to conquer, and hit on Australia.  I show how refugees flying from the burdens of a super-tax, ran slap into South Africa, and enriched the Union Jack with a large hunk of unused territory and Solly Joel.  I give the details of how Burgess, sauntering casually on his back down the Straits of Magellan, bumped his head against the pier on Desolation Island, found a Scotsman there, and ultimately decided that annexation — from a business point of view — was not worth while.  The narrative, too, is set forth of how the British occupation of Egypt ultimately came about through the untiring efforts of Messrs. Salmon & Gluckstein to produce a reliable cigarette at a popular price.  These, and many other absorbing accounts, equally true, are given in the picturesque and vivid style that is so peculiarly my own; and the illustrations are in the best possible taste.

If my work succeeds in its object of teaching men to think imperially from the time their early doors open, I shall feel that the time spent upon its production has not been uselessly filched from Greenwich Observatory.  Or if it so influences Mr. Someone of Surbiton, or Mr. Nobody of Norbury as to cause him to take but a passing interest in Imperial affairs, I feel that I shall not do down to posterity unhonoured, though it is possible I may go unhung. — London Opinion

Before the Killing Frost

I took these photographs of neighborhood flowers several days ago, before nightly temperatures plunged to well below freezing.  All of the flowers shown have perished.

Behind my apartment complex is a marsh filled with cattails.  Here is the marsh before the frost did its lethal work.

Where springtime comes the marsh will be renewed.  If the Park Department's flower budget is funded, the flowers will also be renewed.

Routine and Its Danger to Retirement

I have been reading Learn to Grow Old (1971) by Paul Tornier (1898 - 1986).  In this extract he is summarizing the statistical research on retirement and death by Professor Arthur Jores (1901-1982).


It is, then, the uniformity of office work and the spirit of routine that it creates which are most likely to turn retirement into a serious crisis.  Jores notes in this connection that an office career prevents the employee from maturing inwardly.  Retirement is a calamity for the civil servant who has wholly identified himself with his work, and who has not attained a certain personal maturity.  In that case the consequence can be death, and of this there are striking examples.

Routine!  There you have public enemy number one.  We had already suspected as much.  But now we have been provided with a scientific demonstration of the fact.  One ages prematurely in a routine existence.  There are people who are already little old men at thirty or forty, because their lives are restricted by routine.  What will become of them when retirement comes and deprives them of their sole motive force -- professional duty?  They will sink into boredom and passivity.  We can see a vicious circle here, as in all domains of life: routine causes ageing, and this premature ageing buries the individual all the deeper in routine.  On the other hand, to stay open throughout our lives to a multiplicity of interest is to prepare for ourselves a lasting youth and a retirement free from boredom.

...

Those who let themselves slide -- down to death -- are those who no longer have a task, a goal, a hope, more meaning in their lives.  There is no joy in an aimless life, no fulfillment when life seems meaningless.  Now this radical despair, the veritable breath of death, is only an exacerbation of an existential anxiety which I believe to be latent in every man, ready to rise to the surface as soon as he feels himself powerless to solve a personal problem.  That is when those diseases appear which are peculiar to man, and of which Jores speaks.  All those functional troubles which are called 'nervous' are signs of a dissatisfaction with life, an emptiness of meaning, a personal problem that is unsolved and is without hope of solution.

Neighborhood Flowers

I was impressed with the flower bed near my apartment.  It gets high marks for color, variety, and arrangement.

Ashley Sterne The Ungrammarians Funeral

I was delighted to discover this sardonic short story by Ashley Sterne in the New Zealand National Library archive, Papers Past.  The story was originally published in the London Mail and then republished in the King Country Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 2291, 1 July 1926. 


A SHORT STORY.

THE UNGRAMMARIAN’S FUNERAL.

The carbonised remains of the odious Lady Cargoyle had barely cooled in the choice casserole generously provided (at an inclusive fee) by the select crematorium which had undertaken the lengthy and laborious process of incinerating her portly carcase before John Smith began to get busy again. I recognised the symptoms from afar, as experience had taught me. He became the soul of unrest. Every evening he would pace the floor of our sitting-room for hours on end, until the stuffed seagull in its glass case moulted in its agitation.

Always he got up in the middle of the night to shave. Day after day, and throughout each day, he would travel round the Inner Circle wrapt in thought, his unseeing eyes fixed upon the alluring pictorial advertisements for feminine underwear —a sheer waste of opportunity. Occasionally he would rise early, fill his pockets with sardines and hard-boiled eggs, and his hat with beer, and sally forth for a long day’s tramp over Lincoln Inn Fields or Doctors’ Commons, returning to our chambers late at night in an advanced state of intox —that is to say exhaustion —and vouchsafing naught but hiccups in reply to my anxious inquiries. One morning, however, after a particularly restless life, during which he had thrice woken me up: 1) To borrow fourpence, 2) To solicit my opinion respecting India 3 1/2 per cents.; and 3) To ask whether I was fond of asphalt: I determined to take the bull by the horns and beard the lion in his den.

“You have something on your mind,” I suggested, in the same casual manner as I might inquire if he had something on the Lincolnshire.

“You are right, Eric, I have,” agreed John Smith, relapsing again into a brooding silence.

“Tell me,” I urged. “Pour out your heart into my ear. Lay bare your bosom to my other ear. I am all ears.”

My friend muttered something which sounded like “not quite-but-very-nearly.” and then spoke out. “Look here, old pal, do you know that bloater—-I mean blighter —Lord Softroe?”

“You mean that fellow who got into the peerage for inventing the Army sausage?”

Smith nodded. “Formerly Jabez Ramsbotham’s pork butcher, of the Walworth Road.” he added.

“Well, yes and no,” I went on. “I know him to speak to, but not by sight.”

“I once rang him up in mistake for Hardroe, my solicitor.” John Smith rose from his seat at the breakfast table, and sat in another seat not at the breakfast table.  “I have decided to destroy Lord Softroe,” he said, after an ominous pause.

I had felt it coming. Whenever my friend spoke in these precise, steely tones, it always betokened trouble for somebody, usually of a fatal nature. “Why?” I asked.

“Listen! A fortnight ago, as you may remember. Lord Softroe took the chair at the annual dinner of the shareholders of Camberwell Free Prison, an admirable institution, of which Lord Softroe, in his commoner days, was a patron, and is to-day president.”

“I read the report of it in the Murderers’ Illustrated Monthly.”

“In the course of his after-dinner speech,” continued my friend, “he made use of the following expressions: ‘lt is not for me,’ said his lordship, ‘to any longer inopportunely stand between you and the musical programme which is to almost immediately follow. As far as I am concerned, my duties end here. Between you and I they officially ceased when I suggested you drinking the health of the public hangman coincidentally with the toast of this honourable institution. Under the circumstances I feel that of the two courses open to me the wisest is to at once and without further words resume my seat,’ What do you think of that?”

“That’s all right,” I said. “In resuming his seat, which he never ought to have left, his lordship behaved with admirable judgment.”

“But you miss the point,” exclaimed my friend. “Did you not detect that he thrice split his infinitives almost reduced them to matchwood. ‘To any longer inopportunely stand is one; ‘to almost immediately follow’ is another; ‘to at once and without further words resume’ is the third and longest—a positive Marathon of a split infinitive.”

“By Jove!” I cried indignantly, “the fellow deserves to be roasted whole on Bethnal Green.”

“But I haven’t done with him yet,” pursued John Smith. “Didn’t you observe that he said: ‘As far as I am concerned’ instead of ‘So far as I am concerned’; ‘between you and I’ instead of ‘between you and me’; ‘under the circumstances’ instead of ‘in the circumstances'; and ‘my wisest course’ instead of ‘any wiser course?”

“Yes,” I affirmed, “I did notice all that.” I didn’t, but, after all—why—

“But his crowning offence,” said my friend, interrupting my parenthesis, “was the misuse of the gerund.”

“Gerald who?” I asked .

“Gerund — not Gerald,” snapped Smith. ‘He said ‘you drinking the health’ instead of ‘your drinking the health.’ What d’you think of that?”

“Oh, the despicable villain—the black-hearted rogue!” I cried, swallowing an egg whole in my excitement. “Cruelty to gerunds must be punished with the utmost rigour of the law. And one of the Upper House, too, to whom we look to set an example to the Labour members! Would you find Jack Jones maltreating a harmless gerund! Would you find Jimmy Maxton splitting a poor little harmless infinitive! Yes. I mean no!”

“Well, his number’s up,” remarked my friend (opening a bottle of stout and preparing to assume the black draught). “I will have Lord Softroe on toast ere herrings are in the bay again!”

“How will you lay hands on him?” I inquired, “and how will you kill him? And how will you —

“Wait, Eric, wait! Remember your family motto —‘Little by little.’ I can’t give you details now, because I haven't got any on me. But I shall find ways and means eventually. In the meantime it would perhaps be as well if I brewed a little more trimethylethyldethyline.”

“Poisoning is too good for the blackguard!” I exclaimed, vehemently. “He ought to be slowly grilled over an unexpurgated edition of Balzac.”

A week later I read of Lord Softroe’s unexpected death in the luncheon-time issue of Pear’s Annual.
He had retired to bed the previous night (I learned in the best of health and spirits—the latter a famous proprietary brand).

His lordship’s valet called him as usual in the morning and was, as usual, told to go to hell.

As Lord Softroe did not come down to breakfast at his customary hour, the valet once again ventured to knock on the bedroom door, but this time without a word of acknowledgment.

Fearing foul play, the man procured an egg-whisk (produced — sensation in court) and beat the door down.

Entering the room, he saw Lord Softroe had collapsed across the washing-stand, his face buried up to the hilt in the soap-dish. He was dead. Very dead, the valet thought. From the rigidity of his lordship's pyjamas, he was of the opinion that his master had been dead an hour.

Of course, it was Smith’s work, but how he had contrived to do it I could not imagine. He hadn’t been near our chambers for three days, and I had concluded he was still going round the Inner Circle thinking, thinking, thinking.

However, when I returned home later in the day, I found him sitting by the lire reading Henley (the poet, not the regatta) and caressing Phyllis Monkman (our cat, not the famous vocalist).

“I see you’ve brought it off,” I began.

“What?” he asked, still reading and caressing.

“The Softroe business,” I said.

“Oh, that!” he said, with an air of boredom. “I’d forgotten all about it. Yes —it’s all over. A splendid bit of work.”

“Tell me about it,” I requested.

“After trying several methods,” said Smith. “I succeeded in getting into the lordly mansion yesterday. You heard, perhaps, that the house is for sale? On the pretence of examining the fixtures and fittings for a prospective purchaser, I disguised myself as a plumber, and went all over the house. I had my little poison phial with me, but beyond that I had no clear idea of what I was going to do with it.”

“Why!” I interjected, “you could have gone into the larder under the excuse of seeing if any of the joints were leaking, and poured the stuff all over the food.”

Smith sneered.  “And killed the household! A nice pickle you would have made if you had decided to put a finger in the pie and settle his lordship’s hash! No, it was not until I was in the old boy‘s bedroom that I got my brain-wave. How could I ensure my subtle poison getting into Lord Softroe’s mouth and nobody else’s? His toothbrush!”

“Ah,” I cried, with relish.

“To pour a few drops among the bristles,” continued Smith, “was the work of a moment. The stuff is odourless and tasteless; its presence could never be detected. My one fear was that his lordship might wear complete upper and lower dentures. Fortunately, the result shows my fear was groundless, and another hideous menace is removed from amongst us.”

“That being so, and you being free now,” I said, “what about a few days’ golf at Eastbourne?”

“Not until after the funeral,” said John Smith. “Eric, sometimes I cannot help thinking you are a man without a heart.” — By Ashley Sterne, in the London Mail.

Hike in the Enchanted Forest

The weather was perfect for a midday hike in the foothills.  I chose the Enchanted Forest hike, a scenic walk through the woods.

I saw one rattlesnake and no deer.

The day's scorecard:

Ashley Sterne Making Chess A Popular Game

A short Ashley Sterne article republished in the Adelaide Chronicle, 23 August 1924.

(Note: "Huff" means to remove from the draughts board (checker board) a man which could have captured a piece but has not done so.  The term grew out of the custom of blowing upon the piece.)


My readers will be for ever grateful to Mr. Ashley Sterne, of the English ‘Passing Show,' for the advice he gives upon 'how to make chess a really popular game.  For example: — 'Why we should all feel so desperate an urge to attend cup finals is, to me, a psychological subtlety incapable of solution. I can only wish that, for the sake of sport in general, the same stimulus would impel us to witness the finals of other forms of manly recreation. It would be all to the good of the game.

Take the recent chess tournament in America. From all accounts it was a slow affair— one game alone taking 6 and 1/2 hours to decide—yet I cannot help thinking that, if only there had been a Wembley crowd present, their attendance would have inspired the players to invest the proceedings with a little more pep. Naturally, when there is no cheering, no booing, no maiming, no lynching of the referee, the contestants can hardly be expected to brisk up and chivvy their pieces round the board on third gear. I feel perfectly certain that if the players were from time to time encouraged with stentorian shouts of— 'Good old Bogoljubow!  Now you've got him— give him check with your rook! Good old Bogoljubow! ….. Come on, Capablanca! Pull up your rooks! Centre with your queen's bishop! . . . .Oh, good move, sir! Absolutely stymied him! .... Pinch his blinking knight! . . . . Well played, Tartakower! .... Now's your chance, Lasker! Collar him en passant .... Durn it, why don't you castle, you boob .... Oh, jolly fine push, Maroczy! Ra! Ra! Ra! .. . '— I feel certain, I say, that such exclamations would put the players on their mettle, and stimulate them to do something a little more exciting and spectacular.

Much, too, might be done by revising the existing chess rules, and by introducing a football atmosphere into the game. For example, 1 would like to see the player who has had the misfortune to lose his queen become entitled to take a free kick at his adversary, partly to compensate him for the loss of this valuable piece, and partly because it is a clear case of lese majeste to put a queen out of action when she's having a good time. I would like, also, a player threatened with imminent checkmate to be empowered to drop a new King on to the board over his shoulder.

I am further of opinion that it would be a vast improvement if, when a knight is in the act of jumping over an intervening piece, the opposing player be allowed to rush in and 'head' the knight.  Captured pieces, too, might be thrown on the board again from the touch-lines by the referee; and I am all in favor of ‘huffing’ in chess, as is the custom in draughts.

And lastly, I would like to see the rule about moving in turn scrapped, and the players be permitted to hustle their men along with all possible energy. There seems to me to be something radically wrong about a game where you have to wait for your opponent to hit you.

Back from Iowa

I vacationed for a week in Iowa.

Here are two photographs from my old neighborhood.  I walked up the alley from my father's house and saw an antique Ford car parked in the yard. It appears to be a 1931 Model A Rumble Seat Coupe.  Gorgeous.

When I turned around, I saw a grotesque tree that had been chopped bare on one side to avoid power lines.

Iowa is an unconventional place.

Ashley Sterne Radio's Rival

This topical comic article on international telephony by Ashley Sterne was reprinted in the Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs Gazette (Queensland, Australia) on 3 June 1926.  The article exhibits Sterne’s trusty techniques of exaggeration and elegant variation.

The end of the article from Trove was very faded, so I may have erroneously transcribed the phrase “talking hot ether” in the last paragraph, although “talking hot ether” sounds like authentic colorful radio slang.

RADIO'S RIVAL.

World Telephony.

THE HUMOUR OF IT.

The success of the recent wireless telephony trials between London and New York has left me with somewhat mixed feelings, writes Ashley Sterne in the "Radio Supplement."

On the one hand, I want to get up and cheer at the prospect of very shortly being able to ring up the Waldorf-Astoria and book a supper table for the week after next (Ellis Island permitting); on the other, I am fearful that the novelty of international telephoning may jeopardise our growing interest in international radio. For, of course, once wireless telephony becomes a commercial fait accompli between us and all the States, the other countries of the world will sooner or later be similarly connected; and then the acid test will be invoked as to whether telephony or radio is to form our principal fireside diversion.

Instead of the international radio enthusiast waking his wife up in the middle of the night to tell her he's got Pernambuco on only one valve, I can dimly foresee him bursting in upon her slumbers with the startling news that he’s got through to St. Helena after only three wrong numbers, and thereafter swanking about it to that fellow Simpson, who has been vainly endeavouring for a week past to ring up Corsica with no better result than a monotonous repetition of the depressing formula, "Corsica engaged."

There are, however, several obstacles to be surmounted before anything approaching a general change of allegiance from international radio to international telephony takes place. To begin with, there is the language difficulty. The ringer (let me so style him) will have to confine his activities either to English speaking countries or to those countries of whose language he has something more than a correspondence system knowledge.

It will scarcely add to the amity between nations if, for example, he rings up Milan, and, when connection is established, can find nothing better to say than "Buon giorno! Andante ma non troppo!" or "La donna e' mobile!" In like manner, no good object would be served by his ringing up, say, French Guiana, and urging the listener to pass the mustard, or inquiring as to the whereabouts of the umbrella of the gardener's little feminine neighbour, or —worse still—plodding painstakingly through the entire conjugation of an irregular verb. All of these things would merely lead to verbal reprisals, which fortunately for the ringer's peace of mind and self-respect, he would be unable to understand.

Again, even supposing the ringer to be thoroughly familiar with the language of the country he is ringing up, he will certainly find it a matter of impossibility to sustain a conversation that will prove helpful and stimulating to both parties. He gets on to Lhassa, the “forbidden city'' of Tibet, for instance. Well, after he has inquired after the health of the Dalai Lama, and ascertained the state of the praying wheel market, I cannot imagine what subject of mutual interest he could possibly pounce upon. To inform the stolid Mongol at the other end that Double Chance was strongly fancied for the Grand National, or that the cuckoo had been heard at Billericay last Tuesday afternoon, would create nothing but a purely ephemeral emotion in the phlegmatic Oriental breast.

Even should the ringer establish communication with some highly civilised community, such as Japan, the same difficulty would confront him. Having got on to Tokio 6689 and learned that the subscriber was the proprietor of a jinrinkisha garage or of a samisen warehouse—well, after expressing the hope that they were all well at home, and that business was bucking up, I can't see that anything else remains to be said.

Then, too, the potential international "telephone" fan will need to bear in mind that, unlike international radio, international telephony works both ways. That is to say, he himself stands to be rung up, possibly at considerable inconvenience to his personal comfort.

To state a theoretical case, he may be roused at midnight from the heavy slumber induced by a Masonic banquet in order to satisfy the importunate advances of some fellow "fan" who has rung him up from Auckland (New Zealand), where, of course, the time is half-past 11 to-morrow morning. Or on some bitter, winter night he may be summoned to the 'phone in his pyjamas at 2 a.m. to exchange greetings and kind enquiries with some thoughtless enthusiast in San Francisco, where the time is 8 o'clock yesterday evening.

And lastly, I should never be surprised to learn that with the universal adoption of wireless telephony a new system of payment for calls was necessitated, and that ready money only would be accepted in settlement therefore, and that in the currency of the country whose exchange you were employing (which is only right and reasonable). For this purpose every wireless telephone would have to be accompanied by a please-turn-the-handle cash receiver, and 1 can quite imagine the difficulty the ringer would have if he were not familiar with the currency used in the country he desired to talk to. Take Tibet again. Tibet Exchange informs you that it has got Lhassa D78S, and requests you to put in the slot a pound and a half of brick-tea. Well, unless you are previously aware that brick-lea constitutes the customary currency of Tibet, the odds are that you won't have any in the house.

Or take the Solomon Islands. Fancy being told to put 25,000 cowrie shells or their equivalent in wives!  Or even Russia. An exchange twopenny call at about twenty million roubles, and by the time the ringer had put in only a tithe of this amount, he will probably be well through his second childhood and incapable of any further physical effort.

In view of these difficulties which  have briefly indicated. 1 may possibly be adjudged an alarmist in contemplating a conceivable warning of public interest in international broadcast reception. But my enthusiasm for international radio is such that I am very jealous for its present justly named prestige: and hence I shall not in the least mind if the reader accuse me of talking hot ether. I shall have spring-cleaned my conscience.

New Camera

I purchased a new point-and-shoot (autofocusing) camera to replace one that I lost last year.

The new camera seems to do a competent job if I can keep my hands steady.  Here are photos of white and pink blossoms from flowering trees outside my apartment building.

The fragrance is even more delightful than the sight.

Family Visit in San Diego

I just spent five days in San Diego helping the California wing of the family get over a nasty flu.  My little grandson bounced back quickly, and I had the pleasure of sending a lot of time with him.  Here he is, walking along the broad sidewalk that runs along the beach.

He is on his way to investigate the surroundings, confident that Daddy and Grandpa are backing him up.

First Hike of 2019

April is always a tricky month for a Spring hike.  Mud and ice can surprise you in the shady valleys.

I drove to the top of Lookout Mountain on Saturday and hiked down the trail until it got treacherous with slick ice on the steep parts.  Here is a phone picture of a benign section of the trail.

Edith Schaeffer On Time

Edith Schaeffer (1914-2013, was a Christian author and co-founder of L'Abri (meaning "shelter"), an evangelical Christian student ministry, with her husband Francis Schaeffer in 1955.   Edith Schaeffer's 1969 book L'Abri told the story of how she and her family grew the L'Abri work from conversations with students at their kitchen table into an international ministry.

In the first chapter I ran across a paragraph that struck me:

     The most precious thing a human being has to give is time.  There is so very little of it, after all, in a life.  Minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year, years in a life.  It all goes so swiftly!  And what has been done with it?  A burning zeal to do something in the realm of art, of music, of other creative fields, or science, of medicine, of exploration, of just plain living -- yet how much time is there to develop in one's chosen field and to accomplish anything that makes even a smudge of a difference?  When one feels one has found something far more important than how to utilise a lifetime with some purpose, when one feels one has found an open door to eternity with endless time to spend and an unending purpose to spend it for, when one is certain one is in communication with the Person who makes all this possible, then the burning still is there . . . but it is in a desire to share this certainty.

Also, from Chapter 3:

     Just before our return something happened which was a thread which would appear several times in the weaving of our lives in the next years.  That "something" was a person by the name of Baroness von Dumreicher, who was staying with some young people in Chalet Bijou.  A German baroness, she had spent forty years of her life in Egypt, and, as she said, they were years spent in light social pleasures. Many tragic things happened to different members of her family, and last of all her husband was killed, and she lost all her earthly possessions.  She was living in Switzerland on money given her by a nephew, but it made her feel like a pauper.  Troubled in her thoughts about the present and the future, she had heard of us, and asked us to visit her.  Her first and most important desire was to know whether there was any way she could be assured that her sins would be forgiven.  That there was an existing God, she had no doubt, but she feared death, and looked back on an empty life, filled with what she honestly felt was sin -- and knew that was not much "time left to make up for it."  With her earphone held out eagerly to catch every word she came step by step into that happy assurance which the Bible gives to believers, and which is not based on works which men must have time to do, but upon something that has been done for them by the Son of God.  It is really an exciting thing to have a message like this for the world.  If "eternal life" depended on what a person had time left to do, or strength to do, or will-power to do, or emotions to feel, or talent to accomplish, or brilliance to understand, or money to pay for, or family line or merit, how sad a thing it would be to say to such an eager searching question: "Sorry, but this is not for you."
     As it was, the baroness became a Christian, and was as excited as a child finding hidden treasure.

E M Forster The Machine Stops

I stumbled on an interesting 1910 science fiction story by E. M. Forster (1879-1970), "The Machine Stops."

It is easily found on the internet.  Here is a teaser.


THE MACHINE STOPS

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.

The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.

'I suppose I must see who it is', she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.

'Who is it?' she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.

But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:
'Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes - for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on "Music during the Australian Period".'

She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.

'Be quick!' she called, her irritation returning. 'Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time.'

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.

'Kuno, how slow you are.'

He smiled gravely.

'I really believe you enjoy dawdling.'

'I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say.'

'What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?'

'Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want----'

'Well?'

'I want you to come and see me.'

Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.  'But I can see you!' she exclaimed. 'What more do you want?'

'I want to see you not through the Machine,' said Kuno. 'I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.'

'Oh, hush!' said his mother, vaguely shocked. 'You mustn't say anything against the Machine.'

'Why not?'

'One mustn't.'

'You talk as if a god had made the Machine,' cried the other. 'I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.'

She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.

'The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.'

'I dislike air-ships.'

'Why?'

'I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air- ship.'

'I do not get them anywhere else.'

'What kind of ideas can the air give you?'

He paused for an instant. 'Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?'

'No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me.'

'I had an idea that they were like a man.'

'I do not understand.'

'The four big stars are the man's shoulders and his knees. The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a sword.'

'A sword?'

'Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.'

'It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?'

'In the air-ship-----' He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people - an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something 'good enough' had long since been accepted by our race.

'The truth is,' he continued, 'that I want to see these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, but from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago. I want to visit the surface of the earth.'

She was shocked again.

'Mother, you must come, if only to explain to me what is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth.'

'No harm,' she replied, controlling herself. 'But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air.'

'I know; of course I shall take all precautions.'

'And besides----'

'Well?'

She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition. 'It is contrary to the spirit of the age,' she asserted.

'Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?'

'In a sense, but----'

His image is the blue plate faded.

'Kuno!'

He had isolated himself.

For a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

Vashti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month.

To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.

The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primeval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.

The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated herself-it was necessary, for neither day nor night existed under the ground-and reviewed all that had happened since she had summoned the bed last. Ideas? Scarcely any. Events - was Kuno's invitation an event?

By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter - one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound.
Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced round the glowing room as if some one might be watching her. Then, half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured 'O Machine! O Machine!' and raised the volume to her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed, she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the air-ships from the island in the southern hemisphere, under whose soil she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder lived her son.

She thought, 'I have not the time.'

She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept. Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room light.
'Kuno!'

'I will not talk to you.' he answered, 'until you come.'

'Have you been on the surface of the earth since we spoke last?'

His image faded.

Again she consulted the book. She became very nervous and lay back in her chair palpitating. Think of her as without teeth or hair. Presently she directed the chair to the wall, and pressed an unfamiliar button. The wall swung apart slowly. Through the opening she saw a tunnel that curved slightly, so that its goal was not visible. Should she go to see her son, here was the beginning of the journey.
Of course she knew all about the communication-system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She would summon a car and it would fly with her down the tunnel until it reached the lift that communicated with the air-ship station: the system had been in use for many, many years, long before the universal establishment of the Machine. And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own - the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms! And yet-she was frightened of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last child was born. It curved-but not quite as she remembered; it was brilliant-but not quite as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

'Kuno,' she said, 'I cannot come to see you. I am not well.'

Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead. Kuno had telegraphed to her doctor.

So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine. Vashti drank the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how she felt.

'Better.' Then with irritation: 'But why do you not come to me instead?'

'Because I cannot leave this place.'

'Why?'

'Because, any moment, something tremendous many happen.'

'Have you been on the surface of the earth yet?'

'Not yet.'

'Then what is it?'

'I will not tell you through the Machine.'

She resumed her life.

But she thought of Kuno as a baby, his birth, his removal to the public nurseries, her own visit to him there, his visits to her-visits which stopped when the Machine had assigned him a room on the other side of the earth. 'Parents, duties of,' said the book of the Machine,' cease at the moment of birth.' True, but there was something special about Kuno - indeed there had been something special about all her children - and, after all, she must brave the journey if he desired it. And 'something tremendous might happen'. What did that mean? The nonsense of a youthful man, no doubt, but she must go. Again she pressed the unfamiliar button, again the wall swung back, and she saw the tunnel that curves out of sight. Clasping the Book, she rose, tottered on to the platform, and summoned the car. Her room closed behind her: the journey to the northern hemisphere had begun.

Return of the Son

My younger son returned from Atlanta today.  He will be seeking his fortune in the old home town.

I neglected the blog during his absence.  I was reveling in my idle time with reading books, listening to classical music, and subjecting myself to dieting and exercise.  These are the things that I resort to when I want to run wild at my stage of life.

The Mad Tea Party

I visited a library branch that I have not visited before, to check out a used book sale.  It was spacious and inviting place, and I must remember to return there.

In front of the library was this delightful sculpture, capturing the Wonderland balance of humor and menace.

Alice's upholstered Victorian chair was a marvel of careful metalwork.

A Vestige of Swedish Culture

It is the measure of the calmness of my life that my highest priority this afternoon was to visit IKEA and buy a new potato peeler.

This device is the most elegant item that I have seen at IKEA.  Its design is graceful and it fits the hand nicely.  It would be a bargain at twice the cost.

 

This peeler deserves to be placed in a time capsule to memorialize the high point of the presently declining Swedish culture.

Advice for Theresa May

These days the English elites seem to have lost their way.  How different they are from the early English, as described in Peter Ackroyd's English history book Foundation!  Ackroyd describes the rich in seventh-century English at the time of King Redwald as a wild and fiery bunch:

"The rich engaged in a life of hunting and of warfare.  They ate voluminous quantities of pork and venison.  They drank to excess and were celebrated for doing so.  Their faces were often painted or tattooed.  Men as well as women dyed their hair; blue, green and orange were the colours favoured by the male.  Both sexes were heavily adorned with gold bracelets."

Perhaps Theresa May would have an easier time politically if she changed her bland look to something more in keeping with her ancient English roots.

On the Eve of My Younger Son's Departure

My younger son will be leaving in the morning to seek his future in Georgia.

It will be an adventure for him.  No prearranged job awaits him; he will need to hustle and find work when he gets there. 

This element of uncertainty is exciting for a young man.  At my age, I tend to hunker down securely in my rut and avoid risk of upsets or surprises.  Perhaps I could do with a (limited) boost of excitement myself.