Frenzied Fiction

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This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.

Frenzied Fiction
by Stephen Leacock

CONTENTS

I. My Revelations as a Spy
II. Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy
III. The Prophet in Our Midst
IV. Personal Adventures in the Spirit World
V. The Sorrows of a Summer Guest
VI. To Nature and Back Again
VII. The Cave-Man as He Is
VIII. Ideal Interviews--
I. With a European Prince
II. With Our Greatest Actor
III. With Our Greatest Scientist
IV. With Our Typical Novelists
IX. The New Education
X. The Errors of Santa Claus
XI. Lost in New York
XII. This Strenuous Age
XIII. The Old, Old Story of How Five Men Went Fishing
XIV. Back from the Land
XV. The Perplexity Column as Done by the Jaded Journalist
XVI. Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life
XVII. In Dry Toronto
XVIII. Merry Christmas

I. My Revelations as a Spy

In many people the very name "Spy" excites a shudder of
apprehension; we Spies, in fact, get quite used to being
shuddered at. None of us Spies mind it at all. Whenever
I enter a hotel and register myself as a Spy I am quite
accustomed to see a thrill of fear run round the clerks,
or clerk, behind the desk.

Us Spies or We Spies--for we call ourselves both--are
thus a race apart. None know us. All fear us. Where do
we live? Nowhere. Where are we? Everywhere. Frequently
we don't know ourselves where we are. The secret orders
that we receive come from so high up that it is often
forbidden to us even to ask where we are. A friend of
mine, or at least a Fellow Spy--us Spies have no friends
--one of the most brilliant men in the Hungarian Secret
Service, once spent a month in New York under the impression
that he was in Winnipeg. If this happened to the most
brilliant, think of the others.

All, I say, fear us. Because they know and have reason
to know our power. Hence, in spite of the prejudice
against us, we are able to move everywhere, to lodge in
the best hotels, and enter any society that we wish to
penetrate.

Let me relate an incident to illustrate this: a month
ago I entered one of the largest of the New York hotels
which I will merely call the B. hotel without naming it:
to do so might blast it. We Spies, in fact, never _name_
a hotel. At the most we indicate it by a number known
only to ourselves, such as 1, 2, or 3.

On my presenting myself at the desk the clerk informed
me that he had no room vacant. I knew this of course to
be a mere subterfuge; whether or not he suspected that
I was a Spy I cannot say. I was muffled up, to avoid
recognition, in a long overcoat with the collar turned
up and reaching well above my ears, while the black beard
and the moustache, that I had slipped on in entering the
hotel, concealed my face. "Let me speak a moment to the
manager," I said. When he came I beckoned him aside and
taking his ear in my hand I breathed two words into it.
"Good heavens!" he gasped, while his face turned as pale
as ashes. "Is it enough?" I asked. "Can I have a room,
or must I breathe again?" "No, no," said the manager,
still trembling. Then, turning to the clerk: "Give this
gentleman a room," he said, "and give him a bath."

What these two words are that will get a room in New York
at once I must not divulge. Even now, when the veil of
secrecy is being lifted, the international interests
involved are too complicated to permit it. Suffice it to
say that if these two had failed I know a couple of others
still better.

I narrate this incident, otherwise trivial, as indicating
the astounding ramifications and the ubiquity of the
international spy system. A similar illustration occurs
to me as I write. I was walking the other day with another
man, on upper B. way between the T. Building and the W.
Garden.

"Do you see that man over there?" I said, pointing from
the side of the street on which we were walking on the
sidewalk to the other side opposite to the side that we
were on.

"The man with the straw hat?" he asked. "Yes, what of
him?"

"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that he's a Spy!"

"Great heavens!" exclaimed my acquaintance, leaning up
against a lamp-post for support. "A Spy! How do you know
that? What does it mean?"

I gave a quiet laugh--we Spies learn to laugh very quietly.

"Ha!" I said, "that is my secret, my friend. _Verbum
sapientius! Che sara sara! Yodel doodle doo!_"

My acquaintance fell in a dead faint upon the street. I
watched them take him away in an ambulance. Will the
reader be surprised to learn that among the white-coated
attendants who removed him I recognized no less a person
than the famous Russian Spy, Poulispantzoff. What he was
doing there I could not tell. No doubt his orders came
from so high up that he himself did not know. I had seen
him only twice before--once when we were both disguised
as Zulus at Buluwayo, and once in the interior of China,
at the time when Poulispantzoff made his secret entry
into Thibet concealed in a tea-case. He was inside the
tea-case when I saw him; so at least I was informed by
the coolies who carried it. Yet I recognized him instantly.
Neither he nor I, however, gave any sign of recognition
other than an imperceptible movement of the outer eyelid.
(We Spies learn to move the outer lid of the eye so
imperceptibly that it cannot be seen.) Yet after meeting
Poulispantzoff in this way I was not surprised to read
in the evening papers a few hours afterward that the uncle
of the young King of Siam had been assassinated. The
connection between these two events I am unfortunately
not at liberty to explain; the consequences to the Vatican
would be too serious. I doubt if it could remain top-side up.

These, however, are but passing incidents in a life filled
with danger and excitement. They would have remained
unrecorded and unrevealed, like the rest of my revelations,
were it not that certain recent events have to some extent
removed the seal of secrecy from my lips. The death of
a certain royal sovereign makes it possible for me to
divulge things hitherto undivulgeable. Even now I can
only tell a part, a small part, of the terrific things
that I know. When more sovereigns die I can divulge more.
I hope to keep on divulging at intervals for years. But
I am compelled to be cautious. My relations with the
Wilhelmstrasse, with Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay,
are so intimate, and my footing with the Yildiz Kiosk
and the Waldorf-Astoria and Childs' Restaurants are so
delicate, that a single _faux pas_ might prove to be a
false step.

It is now seventeen years since I entered the Secret
Service of the G. empire. During this time my activities
have taken me into every quarter of the globe, at times
even into every eighth or sixteenth of it.

It was I who first brought back word to the Imperial
Chancellor of the existence of an Entente between England
and France. "Is there an Entente?" he asked me, trembling
with excitement, on my arrival at the Wilhelmstrasse.
"Your Excellency," I said, "there is." He groaned. "Can
you stop it?" he asked. "Don't ask me," I said sadly.
"Where must we strike?" demanded the Chancellor. "Fetch
me a map," I said. They did so. I placed my finger on
the map. "Quick, quick," said the Chancellor, "look where
his finger is." They lifted it up. "Morocco!" they cried.
I had meant it for Abyssinia but it was too late to
change. That night the warship Panther sailed under sealed
orders. The rest is history, or at least history and
geography.

In the same way it was I who brought word to the
Wilhelmstrasse of the _rapprochement_ between England
and Russia in Persia. "What did you find?" asked the
Chancellor as I laid aside the Russian disguise in which
I had travelled. "A _Rapprochement!_" I said. He groaned.
"They seem to get all the best words," he said.

I shall always feel, to my regret; that I am personally
responsible for the outbreak of the present war. It may
have had ulterior causes. But there is no doubt that it
was precipitated by the fact that, for the first time in
seventeen years, I took a six weeks' vacation in June
and July of 1914. The consequences of this careless step
I ought to have foreseen. Yet I took such precautions as
I could. "Do you think," I asked, "that you can preserve
the _status quo_ for six weeks, merely six weeks, if I
stop spying and take a rest?" "We'll try," they answered.
"Remember," I said, as I packed my things, "keep the
Dardanelles closed; have the Sandjak of Novi Bazaar
properly patrolled, and let the Dobrudja remain under a
_modus vivendi_ till I come back."

Two months later, while sitting sipping my coffee at a
Kurhof in the Schwarzwald, I read in the newspapers that
a German army had invaded France and was fighting the
French, and that the English expeditionary force had
crossed the Channel. "This," I said to myself, "means
war." As usual, I was right.

It is needless for me to recount here the life of busy
activity that falls to a Spy in wartime. It was necessary
for me to be here, there and everywhere, visiting all
the best hotels, watering-places, summer resorts, theatres,
and places of amusement. It was necessary, moreover, to
act with the utmost caution and to assume an air of
careless indolence in order to lull suspicion asleep.
With this end in view I made a practice of never rising
till ten in the morning. I breakfasted with great leisure,
and contented myself with passing the morning in a quiet
stroll, taking care, however, to keep my ears open. After
lunch I generally feigned a light sleep, keeping my ears
shut. A _table d'hote_ dinner, followed by a visit to
the theatre, brought the strenuous day to a close. Few
Spies, I venture to say, worked harder than I did.

It was during the third year of the war that I received
a peremptory summons from the head of the Imperial Secret
Service at Berlin, Baron Fisch von Gestern. "I want to
see you," it read. Nothing more. In the life of a Spy
one learns to think quickly, and to think is to act. I
gathered as soon as I received the despatch that for some
reason or other Fisch von Gestern was anxious to see me,
having, as I instantly inferred, something to say to me.
This conjecture proved correct.

The Baron rose at my entrance with military correctness
and shook hands.

"Are you willing," he inquired, "to undertake a mission
to America?"

"I am," I answered.

"Very good. How soon can you start?"

"As soon as I have paid the few bills that I owe in
Berlin," I replied.

"We can hardly wait for that," said my chief, "and in
case it might excite comment. You must start to-night!"

"Very good," I said.

"Such," said the Baron, "are the Kaiser's orders. Here
is an American passport and a photograph that will answer
the purpose. The likeness is not great, but it is
sufficient."

"But," I objected, abashed for a moment, "this photograph
is of a man with whiskers and I am, unfortunately,
clean-shaven."

"The orders are imperative," said Gestern, with official
hauteur. "You must start to-night. You can grow whiskers
this afternoon."

"Very good," I replied.

"And now to the business of your mission," continued the
Baron. "The United States, as you have perhaps heard, is
making war against Germany."

"I have heard so," I replied.

"Yes," continued Gestern. "The fact has leaked out--how,
we do not know--and is being widely reported. His Imperial
Majesty has decided to stop the war with the United
States."

I bowed.

"He intends to send over a secret treaty of the same
nature as the one recently made with his recent Highness
the recent Czar of Russia. Under this treaty Germany
proposes to give to the United States the whole of
equatorial Africa and in return the United States is to
give to Germany the whole of China. There are other
provisions, but I need not trouble you with them. Your
mission relates, not to the actual treaty, but to the
preparation of the ground."

I bowed again.

"You are aware, I presume," continued the Baron, "that
in all high international dealings, at least in Europe,
the ground has to be prepared. A hundred threads must be
unravelled. This the Imperial Government itself cannot
stoop to do. The work must be done by agents like yourself.
You understand all this already, no doubt?"

I indicated my assent.

"These, then, are your instructions," said the Baron,
speaking slowly and distinctly, as if to impress his
words upon my memory. "On your arrival in the United
States you will follow the accredited methods that are
known to be used by all the best Spies of the highest
diplomacy. You have no doubt read some of the books,
almost manuals of instruction, that they have written?"

"I have read many of them," I said.

"Very well. You will enter, that is to say, enter and
move everywhere in the best society. Mark specially,
please, that you must not only _enter_ it but you must
_move_. You must, if I may put it so, get a move on."

I bowed.

"You must mix freely with the members of the Cabinet.
You must dine with them. This is a most necessary matter
and one to be kept well in mind. Dine with them often in
such a way as to make yourself familiar to them. Will
you do this?"

"I will," I said.

"Very good. Remember also that in order to mask your
purpose you must constantly be seen with the most
fashionable and most beautiful women of the American
capital. Can you do this?"

"Can I?" I said.

"You must if need be"--and the Baron gave a most significant
look which was not lost upon me--"carry on an intrigue
with one or, better, with several of them. Are you ready
for it?"

"More than ready," I said.

"Very good. But this is only a part. You are expected
also to familiarize yourself with the leaders of the
great financial interests. You are to put yourself on
such a footing with them as to borrow large sums of money
from them. Do you object to this?"

"No," I said frankly, "I do not."

"Good! You will also mingle freely in Ambassadorial and
foreign circles. It would be well for you to dine, at
least once a week, with the British Ambassador. And now
one final word"--here Gestern spoke with singular
impressiveness--"as to the President of the United States."

"Yes," I said.

"You must mix with him on a footing of the most open-handed
friendliness. Be at the White House continually. Make
yourself in the fullest sense of the words the friend
and adviser of the President. All this I think is clear.
In fact, it is only what is done, as you know, by all
the masters of international diplomacy."

"Precisely," I said.

"Very good. And then," continued the Baron, "as soon as
you find yourself sufficiently _en rapport_ with everybody,
or I should say," he added in correction, for the Baron
shares fully in the present German horror of imported
French words, "when you find yourself sufficiently in
enggeknupfterverwandtschaft with everybody, you may then
proceed to advance your peace terms. And now, my dear
fellow," said the Baron, with a touch of genuine cordiality,
"one word more. Are you in need of money?"

"Yes," I said.

"I thought so. But you will find that you need it less
and less as you go on. Meantime, good-bye, and best wishes
for your mission."

Such was, such is, in fact, the mission with which I am
accredited. I regard it as by far the most important
mission with which I have been accredited by the
Wilhelmstrasse. Yet I am compelled to admit that up to
the present it has proved unsuccessful. My attempts to
carry it out have been baffled. There is something perhaps
in the atmosphere of this republic which obstructs the
working of high diplomacy. For over five months now I
have been waiting and willing to dine with the American
Cabinet. They have not invited me. For four weeks I sat
each night waiting in the J. hotel in Washington with my
suit on ready to be asked. They did not come near me.

Nor have I yet received an invitation from the British
Embassy inviting me to an informal lunch or to midnight
supper with the Ambassador. Everybody who knows anything
of the inside working of the international spy system
will realize that without these invitations one can do
nothing. Nor has the President of the United States given
any sign. I have sent ward to him, in cipher, that I am
ready to dine with him on any day that may be convenient
to both of us. He has made no move in the matter.

Under these circumstances an intrigue with any of the
leaders of fashionable society has proved impossible. My
attempts to approach them have been misunderstood--in
fact, have led to my being invited to leave the J. hotel.
The fact that I was compelled to leave it, owing to
reasons that I cannot reveal, without paying my account,
has occasioned unnecessary and dangerous comment. I
connect it, in fact, with the singular attitude adopted
by the B. hotel on my arrival in New York, to which I
have already referred.

I have therefore been compelled to fall back on revelations
and disclosures. Here again I find the American atmosphere
singularly uncongenial. I have offered to reveal to the
Secretary of State the entire family history of Ferdinand
of Bulgaria for fifty dollars. He says it is not worth
it. I have offered to the British Embassy the inside
story of the Abdication of Constantine for five dollars.
They say they know it, and knew it before it happened.
I have offered, for little more than a nominal sum, to
blacken the character of every reigning family in Germany.
I am told that it is not necessary.

Meantime, as it is impossible to return to Central Europe,
I expect to open either a fruit store or a peanut stand
very shortly in this great metropolis. I imagine that
many of my former colleagues will soon be doing the same!

II. Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy

It happened quite recently--I think it must have been on
April the second of 1917--that I was making the long
pilgrimage on a day-train from the remote place where I
dwell to the city of New York. And as we drew near the
city, and day darkened into night, I had fallen to reading
from a quaint old copy of Washington Irving's immortal
sketches of Father Knickerbocker and of the little town
where once he dwelt.

I had picked up the book I know not where. Very old it
apparently was and made in England. For there was pasted
across the fly-leaf of it an extract from some ancient
magazine or journal of a century ago, giving what was
evidently a description of the New York of that day.

From reading the book I turned--my head still filled with
the vision of Father Knickerbocker and Sleepy Hollow and
Tarrytown--to examine the extract. I read it in a sort
of half-doze, for the dark had fallen outside, and the
drowsy throbbing of the running train attuned one's mind
to dreaming of the past.

"The town of New York"--so ran the extract pasted in the
little book--"is pleasantly situated at the lower extremity
of the Island of Manhattan. Its recent progress has been
so amazing that it is now reputed, on good authority, to
harbour at least twenty thousand souls. Viewed from the
sea, it presents, even at the distance of half a mile,
a striking appearance owing to the number and beauty of
its church spires, which rise high above the roofs and
foliage and give to the place its characteristically
religious aspect. The extreme end of the island is heavily
fortified with cannon, commanding a range of a quarter
of a mile, and forbidding all access to the harbour.
Behind this Battery a neat greensward affords a pleasant
promenade, where the citizens are accustomed to walk with
their wives every morning after church."

"How I should like to have seen it!" I murmured to myself
as I laid the book aside for a moment. "The Battery, the
harbour and the citizens walking with their wives, their
own wives, on the greensward."

Then I read on:

"From the town itself a wide thoroughfare, the Albany
Post Road, runs meandering northward through the fields.
It is known for some distance under the name of the Broad
Way, and is so wide that four moving vehicles are said
to be able to pass abreast. The Broad Way, especially in
the springtime when it is redolent with the scent of
clover and apple-blossoms, is a favourite evening promenade
for the citizens--with their wives--after church. Here
they may be seen any evening strolling toward the high
ground overlooking the Hudson, their wives on one arm,
a spyglass under the other, in order to view what they
can see. Down the Broad Way may be seen moving also droves
of young lambs with their shepherds, proceeding to the
market, while here and there a goat stands quietly munching
beside the road and gazing at the passers-by."

"It seems," I muttered to myself as I read, "in some ways
but little changed after all."

"The town"--so the extract continued--"is not without
its amusements. A commodious theatre presents with great
success every Saturday night the plays of Shakespeare
alternating with sacred concerts; the New Yorker, indeed,
is celebrated throughout the provinces for his love of
amusement and late hours. The theatres do not come out
until long after nine o'clock, while for the gayer habitues
two excellent restaurants serve fish, macaroni, prunes
and other delicacies till long past ten at night. The
dress of the New Yorker is correspondingly gay. In the
other provinces the men wear nothing but plain suits of
a rusty black, whereas in New York there are frequently
seen suits of brown, snuff-colour and even of
pepper-and-salt. The costumes of the New York women are
equally daring, and differ notably from the quiet dress
of New England.

"In fine, it is commonly said in the provinces that a
New Yorker can be recognized anywhere, with his wife, by
their modish costumes, their easy manners and their
willingness to spend money--two, three and even five
cents being paid for the smallest service."

"Dear me," I thought, as I paused a moment in my reading,
"so they had begun it even then."

"The whole spirit of the place"--the account continued--"has
recently been admirably embodied in literary form by an
American writer, Mr. Washington Irving (not to be confounded
with George Washington). His creation of Father Knickerbocker
is so lifelike that it may be said to embody the very
spirit of New York. The accompanying woodcut--which was
drawn on wood especially for this periodical--recalls at
once the delightful figure of Father Knickerbocker. The
New Yorkers of to-day are accustomed, indeed, to laugh
at Mr. Irving's fancy and to say that Knickerbocker
belongs to a day long since past. Yet those who know tell
us that the image of the amiable old gentleman, kindly
but irascible, generous and yet frugal, loving his town
and seeing little beyond it, may be held once and for
all to typify the spirit of the place, without reference
to any particular time or generation."

"Father Knickerbocker!" I murmured, as I felt myself
dozing off to sleep, rocked by the motion of the car.
"Father Knickerbocker, how strange if he could be here
again and see the great city as we know it now! How
different from his day! How I should love to go round
New York and show it to him as it is."

So I mused and dozed till the very rumble of the wheels
seemed to piece together in little snatches. "Father
Knickerbocker--Father Knickerbocker--the Battery--the
Battery--citizens walking with their wives, with their
wives--their own wives"--until presently, I imagine, I
must have fallen asleep altogether and knew no more till
my journey was over and I found myself among the roar
and bustle of the concourse of the Grand Central.

And there, lo and behold, waiting to meet me, was Father
Knickerbocker himself! I know not how it happened, by
what queer freak of hallucination or by what actual
miracle--let those explain it who deal in such things
--but there he stood before me, with an outstretched hand
and a smile of greeting, Father Knickerbocker himself,
the Embodied Spirit of New York.

"How strange," I said. "I was just reading about you in
a book on the train and imagining how much I should like
actually to meet you and to show you round New York."

The old man laughed in a jaunty way.

"Show _me_ round?" he said. "Why, my dear boy, _I live
here_."

"I know you did long ago," I said.

"I do still," said Father Knickerbocker. "I've never left
the place. I'll show _you_ around. But wait a bit--don't
carry that handbag. I'll get a boy to call a porter to
fetch a man to take it."

"Oh, I can carry it," I said. "It's a mere nothing."

"My dear fellow," said Father Knickerbocker, a little
testily I thought, "I'm as democratic and as plain and
simple as any man in this city. But when it comes to
carrying a handbag in full sight of all this crowd, why,
as I said to Peter Stuyvesant about--about"--here a misty
look seemed to come over the old gentleman's face--"about
two hundred years ago, I'll be hanged if I will. It can't
be done. It's not up to date."

While he was saying this, Father Knickerbocker had beckoned
to a group of porters.

"Take this gentleman's handbag," he said, "and you carry
his newspapers, and you take his umbrella. Here's a
quarter for you and a quarter for you and a quarter for
you. One of you go in front and lead the way to a taxi."

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