Part 5

You see, the brewers used to throw out their used malt and the lees of the beer-vats in a huge pile just back of our friend's fence. One day an enterprising young rooster, whose moral upbringing had been neglected, hopped over the fence and tried some of the malt. It tasted good. Little did he know, poor bird, that he was getting into the clutches of the Demon Rum. He ate fermented malt till he couldn't jam down another grain.

Did it go to his head? Did it?--dear reader, that young rooster accumulated the loveliest load of lush, the most beauteous and bountiful "bun" ever seen in that district--and it is a district rather famous for its "buns."

It was long after dark when the young rooster got home--trying to find the key-hole, no doubt--and he aroused the whole hennery. He staggered around crowing comic songs, insulted all the most respectable hens in the place, started out to whip the other roosters, and put the whole place on the blink generally.

Our friend was aroused by the uproar, and rushed out, thinking that a rat or a stray dog had got into the hen house. He said that it was the finest representation of a hilarious "jag" in an old ladies' home that he ever saw. But, of course, he didn't know at the time what was wrong with the young rooster. He thought he was sick, and went out next morning and gave him some bread and milk--or whatever it is one gives sick roosters. But the rooster would have none of it. He didn't want bread and milk. What he wanted was some bromo-seltzer or a "Collins."

Was the young rooster enlightened as to the evil of his ways? Did he take the pledge and climb on the water-bucket? Alas, no! What that young rooster did was to fly right back over the fence that very afternoon and tank up once more. Worse still, he brought the other roosters with him.

That night there was another rough party in the hennery--four times rougher than the other, for there were four roosters in it. They went in for close harmony in their choral work, and also did a little close scrapping. They even tried to whip our friend the owner when he went out to restore order.

Talk about drunkards' homes and temperance lessons!--that hennery would have furnished the W.C.T.U. and the Prohibitionists generally with arguments for a five years' campaign. In a few days every chicken in the place had developed a taste and capacity for beer that would have filled half the population of Bavaria with envy. Life for them became just one big "bust" after another.

Instead of hopping cheerfully from bed at the first peep of dawn, those chickens slept in till noon. They didn't care who got the early worm. Then they piled over the fence to the malt pile, and stayed right there till closing time and after. They stayed, in fact, till our friend went over and carried them back. He said it made him feel like a police van on the Twelfth of July.

Nothing could keep those hens away from the booze. Our friend built the fence higher; but they dug a tunnel under it. When he blocked that up, they flew over into the neighbors' yards and got around that way. They would even go out by his front gate and walk around the block, and come staggering back at all hours of the night in a way that would give any house a bad name.

Finally he sued the brewery for alienating his hens' affections--they only laid one egg in three months, and when our friend tried to eat it it went to his head it was so full of alcohol. But the Judge said that a man who kept hens in town should be shut up somewhere and have his property managed for him.

*Porters, Pullmans and Patience*

The luxury of modern travel is a thing one often hears spoken about nowadays. Personally, we have had to listen to it for so long, and we are so heartily convinced that it is a piece of arrant humbug, that we are finally moved to protest. "The luxury of modern travel"--pish tush, and again pish! There ain't no such thing.

Travel may not have been luxurious, but it was at least interesting in the good old days of the mail-coaches. We like to think of them rolling with a tremendous clatter of hoofs and a flourish on the guard's horn through grey villages dozing among their elms, right up to the doors of glorious old inns where the hostlers tumbled out with fresh horses and journeying gentlemen tumbled in for a glass of mulled port.

That was travelling, bless you! There was some sport to that, some exhilaration. A man might well be moved to song on the top of one of those old coaches of a fine spring morning with the hedge-rows all in tender green. Even we ourself, who have a voice that causes people to turn around and scowl when we join in a chorus, even we might be led to troll a rollicking catch under such circumstances as that.

But who ever heard of anyone singing in a Pullman car--unless it should be a traveller in the smoking-room who had travelled not wisely but too well? And even those days are past now. Singing isn't done, that's all. There is no excuse for it, except inebriety or a brainstorm--and we have ruled out inebriety, more or less. Besides, the man who manages to get an extra Scotch or so nowadays doesn't make a fuss about it. He keeps the fact a dark and happy secret. So, instead of singing in a Pullman car, one simply sits and grouches until that blessed moment of release when the porter has brushed all the dust off one's coat into one's eye, and one can seize one's grip and totter out into the open air once more.

The misery of modern travel starts from the moment the traveller, laden with disheveled impediments of all sorts, plunges madly out of the house watch in hand--this is difficult but it can be done--to the taxicab which has come just twenty minutes late. The driver says it is because the people at the garage gave him the wrong address, the intimation being that he had finally arrived at the right one by some process of complicated and inspired ratiocination. The real truth is that he stopped to talk to a "ladifren."

Personally, we plunge out and catch a streetcar. We are a democratic cuss. Also they don't make one wait so long. Moreover, it is so exciting to stand on the back platform and pull out one's watch--it is ten minutes fast, though one doesn't suspect it--and break into a cold sweat every time anyone stops the car either to get on or off.

The car-line we usually take crosses railroad-tracks in two or three places. This may seem to the reader an irrelevant detail, but it wouldn't seem so if the reader had to take it. Invariably when one is in a bigger hurry than usual, a shunting-engine and a crew of leisurely fiends in dingy overalls are engaged in chivvying a bunch of freight-cars backwards and forwards over the crossing, while one notes the second-hand of one's watch slipping merrily around and one mentally calls on all the lurid reserves of language.

Rushing into the depot--dear reader, did you ever rush into the Toronto Union Depot? Did you ever sprint madly, with your bag banging against your knees, down that interminable corridor--it seems a mile and a half long at the very least--from the main entrance to the door where a cool ruffian in a uniform insists on stopping you and seeing your ticket, though you have just four seconds to catch your train and you know on what track it is just as well as he does? And when you have finally got by him, did you ever slide down one of those flights of iron steps into that damp and dismal tunnel where the trains stand? If you have ever done any of these things, you can sympathize with us when we repeat with an intonation of melancholy contempt, "The luxury of modern travel!"

But somehow or other in a fashion which strengthens our belief in a kindly Providence, we catch the train. We always do. Just as the porter picks up his little stool and climbs aboard, we hurl ourself and our bag into the vestibule after him. Then, when the conductor and brakeman have lifted us off our ebony brother in livery, we are shown to our berth. Removing our overcoat and picking out of our bag a book and such cigars as have not been reduced to fine-cut, we adjourn to the smoking-room.

There is a general notion, principally among ladies, that the smoking-room of a sleeping-car is a place of extraordinary hilarity and indecorous enjoyment. They have visions of men sitting around in their shirt-sleeves playing poker, drinking out of pocket-flasks, and exchanging amid clouds of smoke stories that would make even the porter blush. But, alas, it is not thus.

Our own experience of Pullman smoking-rooms is that they are the dullest holes on earth. The smoke is there all right, dense clouds of it. And such smoke!--any old thing that will burn, native shag, Turkish cigarettes, five-cent cigars, pipes of every age and degree of disrepute, all mixed up together. But of conversation there is none, except when a couple of commercial travellers start a competition in mendacity as to the number of orders they have taken in the towns along the line. As for stories--we haven't heard a new one yet.

So far as cards are concerned, we once saw a man play solitaire. And on two or three occasions in the more convivial past, crude but friendly souls have drawn from hip-pockets pint-flasks which they have timidly proffered by way of brightening the general gloom. We always hated to refuse--exhibitions of hospitality were so rare there. If an African chief came in and wanted to rub noses--we believe that is the usual expression of friendly interest in Ashantee--we would hardly have had the heart to decline.

About midnight, when one has no decent excuse for putting it off any longer--especially as the porter, who sleeps in the smoking-room, comes in and scowls every few minutes until one gives it up to him--we drag ourself to our berth. That is, we stow ourself away in a dark cubby-hole, too short for us by three inches actual measurement, and just high enough to bruise the top of our head every time we sit up. There we proceed to divest ourself of our garments and lay them away in places where they will fall down on our face at intervals during the night--the intervals being whenever we start to doze.

We would like to go into the details of our divestiture, with a view to comparing notes with other tall gentlemen who have been compelled to remove their habiliments--mentionable and otherwise--within the confines of a berth. In view, however, of the somewhat intimate nature of the case, we are obliged to let it go with the general statement that the performance is a highly acrobatic one. We get our things off somehow or other--probably we give anyone coming along the aisle the impression that a sea-lion or a dromedary has got into our compartment. And then, our final frantic struggle having made us free, we address ourself to sleep.

Sleeping-cars are so named because you try to and can't. Some people can, of course. When they can, they always snore--fiendishly. Invariably there is a man across the aisle with one of those going-down-for-the-third-time snores, the kind that suggest a muffled shriek of agony. All night long you keep hoping against hope that he is really strangling. But he never is. Next morning he always bobs up smiling and rubicund, and informs everyone in the wash-room that he slept like a top--meaning, of course, a racing automobile with the muffler cut out.

Somehow the night goes by. It is one of the melancholy compensations of life that everything passes. Just about dawn you drop off into the first decent nap you have been able to get; and twenty minutes later the porter reaches in and punches you in the ribs or pounds on the roof of the berth to let you know it is time you were up. As a matter of fact, you have a full hour or more before you arrive. But he believes in getting people up early. It gives him a chance to roll up the berths and stow them out of sight in the mysterious recesses the Lord and Mr. Pullman have provided for that purpose. Besides, it is a display of authority, and this is always dear to the porteresque heart--most people's hearts, in fact.

So you sit up suddenly and bang your head. Being thus thoroughly awakened, you glance out of the window and study the fence-posts or the clay banks past which you are speeding. Then you poke a frowsy head into the aisle through the curtains, and promptly drag it back as a large lady in a flowered kimona bears down upon you with an angry glare. It is obvious that she thinks you have been sitting there for half an hour peeping into the aisle till you could get that chance to look at her in her dishabille. Naturally you can't explain. What is there to say? Least of all can you tell her the simple truth, which is that if you had known anything like that was prowling around the car you wouldn't have peeped out for a flock of limousines--or should it be "covey?"

Will someone kindly tell us, will someone please explain, why it is ladies assume that frigidly severe attitude when anyone happens to look at them during their matutinal parades up and down the aisle? If we ourself catch anyone glancing at us while we meander towards the wash-room with our toothbrush and our other collar--anyone, that is, of the opposite sex, and it is surprising how very opposite some of them are--we merely blush in simple-hearted confusion. We may wonder why the lady should look at us. But it would never occur to us to be indignant over the matter, not even if we were wearing a flowered kimona and carried our toilet tools in a cute little silk bag.

In the wash-room you stand for half an hour behind a row of gentlemen with their heads in basins. Every now and then one comes up to breathe, and then he goes down again for another five minutes during which he throws soap-suds all over you. When finally you manage to get a basin yourself, the car gives a sudden lurch and it empties itself gracefully into your lap.

When you have contrived at last to wiggle into your clothes--they always look as if you had spent the night tying knots in them--you go back and sit on the end of your suit-case in the aisle, or somebody else's suit-case, while the porter brushes everybody in sight and takes a quarter away from each of them. We don't mind the quarter. We'd gladly give much more than that if he would only leave us alone. But he won't. He fixes us with his shiny eye; he beckons to us; and we walk away down the aisle to meet him. There he turns our coat-collar back, sifts an ounce or two of coal-dust down our neck, deftly blows the rest of it into our ear, knocks our hat all out of shape, seizes the coin which we feverishly proffer him as the price of our deliverance, and then drops us for the next victim.

"Montreal--this way out!"

One staggers painfully from the car down to the station platform. There a horde of "red caps" descend upon you in a flying phalanx. Taking your luggage and your breath at the same time, they vanish, only to reappear ten minutes later at the station door--you have just about decided they have absconded with your bags--and there they demand salvage for them.

"The luxury of modern travel"--O Lord!

*Helping our Friends to Economize*

We are of a saving nature. We say this more in sorrow than in pride. It has been forced on us. We have saved stamps and cigar-bands. We have saved cigarette pictures and theatre programmes. We have even made sporadic endeavors to save our soul. For the past few months especially our gaze has been fixed on the skies. We had hoped that once the fighting was over--but peace hath her battles no less than war. So we turn our eyes to those celestial abodes where the Bolsheviki cease from troubling. Our only hope is in heaven. In fact, even a nice, quiet corner in hell--but, hush, let us not think of such things!

When we speak, however, of our saving nature, we refer principally, if not exclusively, to money. We have a disposition to save money. We would like to put away huge jars of it. We would enjoy sneaking down to the vault in the middle of the night to count our gold and gloat over it. We would do it even at the risk of getting our new pyjamas all dirtied up with gold-dust.

Not that we have ever been able to accumulate any vast amount of coin, specie, mazuma, cush, dust, rhino, bullion, long green--in short, money. No trust companies grow plethoric with our securities. No vaults strain at their rivets with our lacs of rupees. But the disposition is there on our part. We would save if we had the wherewithal.

That is why we have such a kindly feeling for others who are trying to save--especially now when the high cost of living has combined with the high cost of killing, as represented in war-taxation, to put such a crimp in a fellow's income that it looks like a French pea to a famished ostrich. That is why we never feel aggrieved when our friends don't invite us to dinner, or give us cold mutton or stew when they do. That is why we never make any remarks on the age of their hats or complain of the cold in their houses or express wonder that they don't light the furnace sooner. They are cutting down expenses and we sympathize with them.

We like to see people save. We smile benignly, as one who murmurs, "Bless you, children," when we catch them laying by for a rainy day. We believe in economy. At the same time, it should not be carried to extravagant lengths--at least, not at our expense. We are willing to help our friends to economize, but there are reasonable limits. They must not crowd the kindly mourner too far.

For instance, there is Binks--awfully nice chap, Binks. You must know him, short, fairly stout, wears lavender ties, and rides down to the office every morning on the rear platform of the street-car for the sake of the air. Great fellow for hygiene is Binks. Plays a good game of tennis, too.

Binks invited us over to dinner one Saturday not long ago.

"Tell you what," said Binks in his buoyant way, "come on over early--say, about two o'clock--and we'll walk out to my new lot in the West Annex if it's a fine day and get back in nice time for dinner. Great for the appetite--you'll feel like a prize-fighter after you've strolled around through the woods for a few hours."

It sounded good, and the day was fine, and we were there at two sharp--difficult as it is for us to be anywhere at anything sharp. We were neatly but inconspicuously clad in our walking clothes, Norfolk jacket, green hat, and pipe. We also wore a tan cane and chamois gloves. Nothing elaborate, you know, but grace in every line.

Binks, on the contrary, had on the worst suit we have ever seen out of the furnace room. A greasy old peak-cap reposed on his head, and his trousers were patched and frayed. We didn't mind that. We are not snobbish. But we did object to the tools.

Binks had a cross-cut saw, a sledge-hammer weighing approximately twelve pounds, an axe, and two steel wedges weighing about five pounds each. We looked long and hard at them, and longer and harder at Binks. He had the grace to blush.

"I hope you don't mind, old man," he said with affected lightness, "but there's a bit of a tree fallen down on the lot, and I thought it would be good sport to cut it up this afternoon. Great exercise, you know--brings all the muscles of the back into play. Besides, the wood will come in handy in the grate this winter. Stringency, you see--got to save every penny these times, eh, what?"

We are weak. We gulped once or twice, but what was there to say? We could do nothing but fall in with the plan, and let on that we were overjoyed at the prospect of bringing the muscles of our back into play. It did occur to us, however, that there might be jollier methods of doing so than cutting up fallen trees.

"You better carry the saw," said Binks, "it's light. I'll pack the rest of the stuff--unless you could carry one of the wedges. It's only a short way to the car, you know."

It was only a short way to the car, true enough. But, friend the reader, have you ever tried to carry a cross-cut saw? This particular one was about six feet long, and it had a full set of two-inch teeth, the suppleness of a boa-constrictor, and the temper of a worried weasel. It was simply a long thin band of steel with a heavy wooden handle at each end and enough elasticity to curl around you twice and reach up and bite the top off either ear.

The instant that we put the infernal saw oh our shoulder we realized that we had made a mistake. It slashed around in the air a couple of times to get the exact range, and then it dived down and chewed a neat triangular piece out of our trouser-leg. It would probably have kept right on through our own leg, if we had not by some happy chance or unconscious skill managed to get our cane in the way. This saved the leg, to which we not unnaturally attach a certain value, but it was the last of a very fine piece of malacca. That ferocious saw gnashed its teeth just once, and there were two canes where only one had grown before--two nice little canes each about twenty inches long and cut somewhat on the bias.

This was only a starter. In two seconds that saw had us tied up in a complicated knot, with one handle gouging us just under the left ear, and the other playfully wandering about our frame, while the teeth nipped off exposed pieces of cuticle here and there in an arbitrary and capricious manner. When we got a chance to examine ourself that night in the chaste seclusion of the boudoir, we looked as if we had been tied up in the cellar and the mice had got at us.

We shrieked to Binks to pull the thing off us. After some time and effort--also a few light casualties of his own--he finally did manage to extricate what was left of us. We were going to quit on the spot. We told Binks so with what he must have regarded as a great deal of unnecessary emphasis. But he is a very persuasive cuss, and--well, as we said before, we are weak. We consented to see the thing through. But we declined firmly to carry that saw another foot of the way. We finally compromised, however, and each took a handle. It was awkward but safe enough. The thing bucked occasionally and made frantic efforts to jump on one or other of us; but we held it tight and we got it to the car without further bloodshed.

When we tumbled on board, the conductor took one good look at our equipment and immediately became distinctly unpleasant. He asked us if we had mistaken the car for a motor-lorry, and whether or not we intended to bring a few trees along, too. He said it seemed too bad to leave them behind when there was all that room in the aisle. He also suggested that we should put the saw on the roof and let the handles hang down at each end of the car--he said it was less likely to kill anyone up there.

Our position was most embarrassing--even Binks almost lost his temper, though that wouldn't have done any good. The worst of it was that the passengers seemed to consider the vulgar brute funny, while we couldn't think of anything crushing to say in reply till we had got off and the car was blocks away. Then we realized that we should have said--but perhaps we had better save this up. We may need it some day.