Frenzied Fiction

S >> Stephen Leacock >> Frenzied Fiction

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"Don't you know the way yourself?" I asked in a
half-whisper.

"Of course I do, but I generally like to walk with a boy
in front of me. We all do. Only the cheap people nowadays
find their own way."

Father Knickerbocker had taken my arm and was walking
along in a queer, excited fashion, senile and yet with
a sort of forced youthfulness in his gait and manner.

"Now then," he said, "get into this taxi."

"Can't we _walk_?" I asked.

"Impossible," said the old gentleman. "It's five blocks
to where we are going."

As we took our seats I looked again at my companion; this
time more closely. Father Knickerbocker he certainly was,
yet somehow strangely transformed from my pictured fancy
of the Sleepy Hollow days. His antique coat with its wide
skirt had, it seemed, assumed a modish cut as if in
imitation of the bell-shaped spring overcoat of the young
man about town. His three-cornered hat was set at a rakish
angle till it looked almost like an up-to-date fedora.
The great stick that he used to carry had somehow changed
itself into the curved walking-stick of a Broadway lounger.
The solid old shoes with their wide buckles were gone.
In their place he wore narrow slippers of patent leather
of which he seemed inordinately proud, for he had stuck
his feet up ostentatiously on the seat opposite. His eyes
followed my glance toward his shoes.

"For the fox-trot," he said. "The old ones were no good.
Have a cigarette? These are Armenian, or would you prefer
a Honolulan or a Nigerian? Now," he resumed, when we had
lighted our cigarettes, "what would you like to do first?
Dance the tango? Hear some Hawaiian music, drink cocktails,
or what?"

"Why, what I should like most of all, Father
Knickerbocker--"

But he interrupted me.

"There's a devilish fine woman! Look, the tall blonde
one! Give me blondes every time!" Here he smacked his
lips. "By gad, sir, the women in this town seem to get
finer every century. What were you saying?"

"Why, Father Knickerbocker," I began, but he interrupted
me again.

"My dear fellow," he said. "May I ask you not to call me
_Father_ Knickerbocker?"

"But I thought you were so old," I said humbly.

"Old! Me _old_! Oh, I don't know. Why, dash it, there
are plenty of men as old as I am dancing the tango here
every night. Pray call me, if you don't mind, just
Knickerbocker, or simply Knicky--most of the other boys
call me Knicky. Now what's it to be?"

"Most of all," I said, "I should like to go to some quiet
place and have a talk about the old days."

"Right," he said. "We're going to just the place now--nice
quiet dinner, a good quiet orchestra, Hawaiian, but quiet,
and lots of women." Here he smacked his lips again, and
nudged me with his elbow. "Lots of women, bunches of
them. Do you like women?"

"Why, Mr. Knickerbocker," I said hesitatingly, "I
suppose--I--"

The old man sniggered as he poked me again in the ribs.

"You bet you do, you dog!" he chuckled. "We _all_ do.
For me, I confess it, sir, I can't sit down to dinner
without plenty of women, stacks of them, all round me."

Meantime the taxi had stopped. I was about to open the
door and get out.

"Wait, wait," said Father Knickerbocker, his hand upon
my arm, as he looked out of the window. "I'll see somebody
in a minute who'll let us out for fifty cents. None of
us here ever gets in or out of anything by ourselves.
It's bad form. Ah, here he is!"

A moment later we had passed through the portals of a
great restaurant, and found ourselves surrounded with
all the colour and tumult of a New York dinner _a la
mode_. A burst of wild music, pounded and thrummed out
on ukuleles by a group of yellow men in Hawaiian costume,
filled the room, helping to drown or perhaps only serving
to accentuate the babel of talk and the clatter of dishes
that arose on every side. Men in evening dress and women
in all the colours of the rainbow, _decollete_ to a
degree, were seated at little tables, blowing blue smoke
into the air, and drinking green and yellow drinks from
glasses with thin stems. A troupe of _cabaret_ performers
shouted and leaped on a little stage at the side of the
room, unheeded by the crowd.

"Ha ha!" said Knickerbocker, as we drew in our chairs to
a table. "Some place, eh? There's a peach! Look at her!
Or do you like better that lazy-looking brunette next to
her?"

Mr. Knickerbocker was staring about the room, gazing at
the women with open effrontery, and a senile leer upon
his face. I felt ashamed of him. Yet, oddly enough, no
one about us seemed in the least disturbed.

"Now, what cocktail will you have?" said my companion.
"There's a new one this week, the Fantan, fifty cents
each, will you have that? Right? Two Fantans. Now to
eat--what would you like?"

"May I have a slice of cold beef and a pint of ale?"

"Beef!" said Knickerbocker contemptuously. "My dear
fellow, you can't have that. Beef is only fifty cents.
Do take something reasonable. Try Lobster Newburg, or
no, here's a more expensive thing--Filet Bourbon a la
something. I don't know what it is, but by gad, sir, it's
three dollars a portion anyway."

"All right," I said. "You order the dinner."

Mr. Knickerbocker proceeded to do so, the head-waiter
obsequiously at his side, and his long finger indicating
on the menu everything that seemed most expensive and
that carried the most incomprehensible name. When he had
finished he turned to me again.

"Now," he said, "let's talk."

"Tell me," I said, "about the old days and the old times
on Broadway."

"Ah, yes," he answered, "the old days--you mean ten years
ago before the Winter Garden was opened. We've been going
ahead, sir, going ahead. Why, ten years ago there was
practically nothing, sir, above Times Square, and look
at it now."

I began to realize that Father Knickerbocker, old as he
was, had forgotten all the earlier times with which I
associated his memory. There was nothing left but the
_cabarets_, and the Gardens, the Palm Rooms, and the
ukuleles of to-day. Behind that his mind refused to
travel.

"Don't you remember," I asked, "the apple orchards and
the quiet groves of trees that used to line Broadway long
ago?"

"Groves!" he said. "I'll show you a grove, a coconut
grove"--here he winked over his wineglass in a senile
fashion--"that has apple-trees beaten from here to
Honolulu." Thus he babbled on.

All through our meal his talk continued: of _cabarets_
and dances, or fox-trots and midnight suppers, of blondes
and brunettes, "peaches" and "dreams," and all the while
his eye roved incessantly among the tables, resting on
the women with a bold stare. At times he would indicate
and point out for me some of what he called the
"representative people" present.

"Notice that man at the second table," he would whisper
across to me. "He's worth all the way to ten millions:
made it in Government contracts; they tried to send him
to the penitentiary last fall but they can't get him--he's
too smart for them! I'll introduce you to him presently.
See the man with him? That's his lawyer, biggest crook
in America, they say; we'll meet him after dinner." Then
he would suddenly break off and exclaim: "Egad, sir,
there's a fine bunch of them," as another bevy of girls
came trooping out upon the stage.

"I wonder," I murmured, "if there is nothing left of him
but this? Has all the fine old spirit gone? Is it all
drowned out in wine and suffocated in the foul atmosphere
of luxury?"

Then suddenly I looked up at my companion, and I saw to
my surprise that his whole face and manner had altered.
His hand was clenched tight on the edge of the table.
His eyes looked before him--through and beyond the riotous
crowd all about him--into vacancy, into the far past,
back into memories that I thought forgotten. His face
had altered. The senile, leering look was gone, and in
its place the firm-set face of the Knickerbocker of a
century ago.

He was speaking in a strange voice, deep and strong.

"Listen," he said, "listen. Do you hear it--there--far
out at sea--ships' guns--listen--they're calling for
help--ships' guns--far out at sea!" He had clasped me by
the arm. "Quick, to the Battery, they'll need every man
to-night, they'll--"

Then he sank back into his chair. His look changed again.
The vision died out of his eyes.

"What was I saying?" he asked. "Ah, yes, this old brandy,
a very special brand. They keep it for me here, a dollar
a glass. They know me here," he added in his fatuous way.
"All the waiters know me. The headwaiter always knows me
the minute I come into the room--keeps a chair for me.
Now try this brandy and then presently we'll move on and
see what's doing at some of the shows."

But somehow, in spite of himself, my companion seemed to
be unable to bring himself fully back into the consciousness
of the scene before him. The far-away look still lingered
in his eyes.

Presently he turned and spoke to me in a low, confidential
tone.

"Was I talking to myself a moment ago?" he asked. "Yes?
Ah, I feared I was. Do you know--I don't mind telling it
to you--lately I've had a strange, queer feeling that
comes over me at times, as if _something were happening_
--something, I don't know what. I suppose," he continued,
with a false attempt at resuming his fatuous manner, "I'm
going the pace a little too hard, eh! Makes one fanciful.
But the fact is, at times"--he spoke gravely again--"I
feel as if there were something happening, something
coming."

"Knickerbocker," I said earnestly, "Father Knickerbocker,
don't you know that something _is_ happening, that this
very evening as we are sitting here in all this riot,
the President of the United States is to come before
Congress on the most solemn mission that ever--"

But my speech fell unheeded. Knickerbocker had picked up
his glass again and was leering over it at a bevy of
girls dancing upon the stage.

"Look at that girl," he interrupted quickly, "the one
dancing at the end. What do you think of her, eh? Some
peach!"

Knickerbocker broke off suddenly. For at this moment our
ears caught the sound of a noise, a distant tumult, as
it were, far down the street and growing nearer. The old
man had drawn himself erect in his seat, his hand to his
ear, listening as he caught the sound.

"Out on the Broad Way," he said, instinctively calling
it by its ancient name as if a flood of memories were
upon him. "Do you hear it? Listen--listen--what is it?
I've heard that sound before--I've heard every sound on
the Broad Way these two centuries back--what is it? I
seem to know it!"

The sound and tumult as of running feet and of many voices
crying came louder from the street. The people at the
tables had turned in their seats to listen. The music of
the orchestra had stopped. The waiters had thrown back
the heavy curtains from the windows and the people were
crowding to them to look out into the street. Knickerbocker
had risen in his place, his eyes looked toward the windows,
but his gaze was fixed on vacancy as with one who sees
a vision passing.

"I know the sound," he cried. "I see it all again. Look,
can't you see them? It's Massachusetts soldiers marching
South to the war--can't you hear the beating of the drums
and the shrill calling of the fife--the regiments from
the North, the first to come. I saw them pass, here where
we are sitting, sixty years ago--"

Knickerbocker paused a moment, his hand still extended
in the air, and then with a great light upon his face he
cried:

"I know it now! I know what it meant, the feeling that
has haunted me--the sounds I kept hearing--the guns of
the ships at sea and the voices calling in distress! I
know now. It means, sir, it means--"

But as he spoke a great cry came up from the street and
burst in at the doors and windows, echoing in a single
word:

WAR! WAR! The message of the President is for WAR!

"War!" cried Father Knickerbocker, rising to his full
height, stern and majestic and shouting in a stentorian
tone that echoed through the great room. "War! War! To
your places, every one of you! Be done with your idle
luxury! Out with the glare of your lights! Begone you
painted women and worthless men! To your places every
man of you! To the Battery! Man the guns! Stand to it,
every one of you for the defence of America--for our
New York, New York--"

Then, with the sound "New York, New York" still echoing
in my ears I woke up. The vision of my dream was gone.
I was still on the seat of the car where I had dozed
asleep, the book upon my knee. The train had arrived at
the depot and the porters were calling into the doorway
of the car: "New York! New York!"

All about me was the stir and hubbub of the great depot.
But loud over all it was heard the call of the newsboys
crying "WAR! WAR! The President's message is for WAR!
Late extra! WAR! WAR!"

And I knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds
of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in
the fight for the free democracy of all mankind.

III. The Prophet in Our Midst

The Eminent Authority looked around at the little group
of us seated about him at the club. He was telling us,
or beginning to tell us, about the outcome of the war.
It was a thing we wanted to know. We were listening
attentively. We felt that we were "getting something."

"I doubt very much," he said, "whether Downing Street
realizes the enormous power which the Quai d'Orsay has
over the Yildiz Kiosk."

"So do I," I said, "what is it?"

But he hardly noticed the interruption.

"You've got to remember," he went on, "that, from the
point of view of the Yildiz, the Wilhelmstrasse is just
a thing of yesterday."

"Quite so," I said.

"Of course," he added, "the Ballplatz is quite different."

"Altogether different," I admitted.

"And mind you," he said, "the Ballplatz itself can be
largely moved from the Quirinal through the Vatican."

"Why of course it can," I agreed, with as much relief in
my tone as I could put into it. After all, what simpler
way of moving the Ballplatz than that?

The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and
looked round at us through his spectacles.

It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the
answering, because it was I who had brought him there
and invited the other men to meet him. "He's coming round
at five," I had said, "do come and have a cup of tea and
meet him. He knows more about the European situation and
the probable solution than any other man living." Naturally
they came gladly. They wanted to know--as everybody wants
to know--how the war will end. They were just ordinary
plain men like myself.

I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps
disappointed. They would have liked, just as I would, to
ask a few plain questions, such as, can the Italians
knock the stuff out of the Austrians? Are the Rumanians
getting licked or not? How many submarines has Germany
got, anyway? Such questions, in fact, as we are accustomed
to put up to one another every day at lunch and to answer
out of the morning paper. As it was, we didn't seem to
be getting anywhere.

No one spoke. The silence began to be even a little
uncomfortable. It was broken by my friend Rapley, who is
in wholesale hardware and who has all the intellectual
bravery that goes with it. He asked the Authority straight
out the question that we all wanted to put.

"Just what do you mean by the Ballplatz? What is the
Ballplatz?"

The Authority smiled an engaging smile.

"Precisely," he said, "I see your drift exactly. You say
what _is_ the Ballplatz? I reply quite frankly that it
is almost impossible to answer. Probably one could best
define it as the driving power behind the Ausgleich."

"I see," said Rapley.

"Though the plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian
embroglio the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise
to the Wilhelmstrasse."

"Ah!" said Rapley.

"Indeed, as everybody knows, the whole relationship of
the Ballplatz with the Nevski Prospekt has emanated from
the Wilhelmstrasse."

This was a thing which personally I had _not_ known. But
I said nothing. Neither did the other men. They continued
smoking, looking as innocent as they could.

"Don't misunderstand me," said the Authority, "when I
speak of the Nevski Prospekt. I am not referring in any
way to the Tsarskoe Selo."

"No, no," we all agreed.

"No doubt there were, as we see it plainly now, under
currents in all directions from the Tsarskoe Selo."

We all seemed to suggest by our attitude that these
undercurrents were sucking at our very feet.

"But the Tsarskoe Selo," said the Authority, "is now
definitely eliminated."

We were glad of that; we shifted our feet back into
attitudes of ease.

I felt that it was time to ask a leading question.

"Do you think," I said, "that Germany will be broken up
by the war?"

"You mean Germany in what sense? Are you thinking of
Preuszenthum? Are yon referring to Junkerismus?"

"No," I said, quite truthfully, "neither of them."

"Ah," said the Authority, "I see; you mean Germany as a
Souverantat embodied in a Reichsland."

"That's it," I said.

"Then it's rather hard," said the Eminent Authority, "to
answer your question in plain terms. But I'll try. One
thing, of course, is _absolutely_ certain, Mittel-Europa
goes overboard."

"It does, eh?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely. This is the end of Mittel-Europa.
I mean to say--here we've had Mittel-Europa, that is,
the Mittel-Europa _idea_, as a sort of fantasmus in front
of Teutonism ever since Koniggratz."

The Authority looked all round us in that searching way
he had. We all tried to look like men seeing a fantasmus
and disgusted at it.

"So you see," he went on, "Mittel-Europa is done with."

"I suppose it is," I said. I didn't know just whether to
speak with regret or not. I heard Rapley murmur, "I guess
so."

"And there is not a doubt," continued the Authority, "that
when Mittel-Europa goes, Grossdeutschthum goes with it."

"Oh, sure to," we all murmured.

"Well, then, there you are--what is the result for Germany
--why the thing's as plain as a pikestaff--in fact you're
driven to it by the sheer logic of the situation--there
is only _one_ outcome--"

The Authority was speaking very deliberately. He even
paused at this point and lighted a cigarette, while we
all listened breathlessly. We felt that we had got the
thing to a focus at last.

"Only one outcome--a Staatenbund."

"Great heavens," I said, "not a Staatenbund!"

"Undoubtedly," said the Authority, puffing quietly at
his cigarette, as if personally he wouldn't lift a finger
to stop the Staatenbund if he could, "that's the end of
it, a Staatenbund. In other words, we are back where we
were before the Vienna Congress!"

At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of
us laughed too: the thing was _too_ absurd. But the
Authority, who was a man of nice distinctions and genuinely
anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraid that he had
overstated things a little.

"Mind you," he said, "there'll be _something_
left--certainly the Zollverein and either the Ausgleich
or something very like it."

All of the men gave a sort of sigh of relief. It was
certainly something to have at least a sort of resemblance
or appearance of the Ausgleich among us. We felt that we
were getting on. One could see that a number of the men
were on the brink of asking questions.

"What about Rumania," asked Nelles--he is a banker and
interested in government bonds--"is this the end of it?"

"No," said the Authority, "it's not the end of Rumania,
but it _is_ the end of Rumanian Irridentismus."

That settled Nelles.

"What about the Turks?" asked Rapley.

"The Turks, or rather, I suppose it would be more proper
to say, the Osmanli, as that is no doubt what you mean?"
Rapley nodded. "Well, speaking personally, I should say
that there's no difficulty in a permanent settlement in
that quarter. If I were drawing up the terms of a treaty
of peace meant to be really lasting I should lay down
three absolute bases; the rest needn't matter"--the
Authority paused a moment and then proceeded to count
off the three conditions of peace on his fingers--"These
would be, first, the evacuation of the Sandjak; second,
an international guarantee for the Capitulations; and
third, for internal matters, an arrangement along the
lines of the original firman of Midhat Pasha."

A murmur of complete satisfaction went round the group.

"I don't say," continued the Eminent Authority, "that
there wouldn't be other minor matters to adjust; but they
would be a mere detail. You ask me, for instance, for a
_milice_, or at least a gendarmerie, in the Albanian
hinterland; very good, I grant it you at once. You retain,
if you like, you abolish the Cypriotic suzerainty of the
Porte--all right. These are matters of indifference."

We all assumed a look of utter indifference.

"But what about the Dardanelles? Would you have them
fixed so that ships could go through, or not?" asked
Rapley.

He is a plain man, not easily put down and liking a plain
answer. He got it.

"The Dardanelles," said the Authority, "could easily be
denationalized under a quadrilateral guarantee to be made
a pars materia of the pactum foederis."

"That ought to hold them," I murmured.

The Authority felt now that he had pretty well settled
the map of Europe. He rose and shook hands with us all
around very cordially. We did not try to detain him. We
felt that time like his was too valuable to be wasted on
things like us.

"Well, I tell you," said Rapley, as we settled back into
our chairs when the Great Authority had gone, "my own
opinion, boys, is that the United States and England can
trim Germany and Austria any day in the week and twice
on Sunday."

After which somebody else said:

"I wonder how many of these submarines Germany has,
anyway?"

And then we drifted back into the humbler kind of war
talk that we have been carrying on for three years.

But later, as we walked home together, Rapley said to me:

"That fellow threw a lot of light on things in Europe,
didn't he?"

And I answered:

"Yes."

What liars we all are!

IV. Personal Adventures in the Spirit World

I do not write what follows with the expectation of
convincing or converting anybody. We Spiritualists, or
Spiritists--we call ourselves both, or either--never ask
anybody to believe us. If they do, well and good. If not,
all right. Our attitude simply is that facts are facts.
There they are; believe them or not as you like. As I
said the other night, in conversation with Aristotle and
John Bunyan and George Washington and a few others, why
should anybody believe us? Aristotle, I recollect, said
that all that he wished was that everybody should know
how happy he was; and Washington said that for his part,
if people only knew how bright and beautiful it all was
where he was, they would willingly, indeed gladly, pay
the mere dollar--itself only a nominal fee--that it cost
to talk to him. Bunyan, I remember, added that he himself
was quite happy.

But, as I say, I never ask anybody to believe me; the
more so as I was once an absolute sceptic myself. As I
see it now, I was prejudiced. The mere fact that spiritual
seances and the services of a medium involved the payment
of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not
realize, as I do now, that these _medii_, like anybody
else, have got to live; otherwise they would die and
become spirits.

Nor would I now place these disclosures before the public
eyes were if not that I think that in the present crisis
they will prove of value to the Allied cause.

But let me begin at the beginning. My own conversion to
spiritualism came about, like that of so many others,
through the more or less casual remark of a Friend.

Noticing me one day gloomy and depressed, this Friend
remarked to me:

"Have you any belief in Spiritualism?"

Had it come from anyone else, I should have turned the
question aside with a sneer. But it so happens that I
owe a great deal of gratitude to this particular Friend.
It was he who, at a time when I was so afflicted with
rheumatism that I could scarcely leap five feet into the
air without pain, said to me one day quite casually:
"Have you ever tried pyro for your rheumatism?" One month
later I could leap ten feet in the air--had I been able
to--without the slightest malaise. The same man, I may
add, hearing me one day exclaiming to myself: "Oh, if
there were anything that would remove the stains from my
clothes!" said to me very simply and quietly: "Have you
ever washed them in luxo?" It was he, too, who, noticing
a haggard look on my face after breakfast one morning,
inquired immediately what I had been eating for breakfast;
after which, with a simplicity and directness which I
shall never forget, he said: "Why not eat humpo?"

Nor can I ever forget my feeling on another occasion
when, hearing me exclaim aloud: "Oh, if there were only
something invented for removing the proteins and amygdaloids
from a carbonized diet and leaving only the pure nitrogenous
life-giving elements!" seized my hand in his, and said
in a voice thrilled with emotion: "There is! It has!"

The reader will understand, therefore, that a question,
or query, from such a Friend was not to be put lightly
aside. When he asked if I believed in Spiritualism I
answered with perfect courtesy:

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