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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY LAPSES *** Etext produced by Gardner Buchanan HTML file produced by David Widger








LITERARY LAPSES By Stephen Leacock





CONTENTS

LITERARY LAPSES

My Financial Career

Lord Oxhead's Secret

Boarding-House Geometry

The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones

A Christmas Letter

How to Make a Million Dollars

How to Live to be 200

How to Avoid Getting Married

How to be a Doctor

The New Food

A New Pathology

The Poet Answered

The Force of Statistics

Men Who have Shaved Me

Getting the Thread of It

Telling His Faults

Winter Pastimes

Number Fifty-Six

Aristocratic Education

The Conjurer's Revenge

Hints to Travellers

A Manual of Education

Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas

The Life of John Smith

On Collecting Things

Society Chat-Chat

Insurance up to Date

Borrowing a Match

A Lesson in Fiction

Helping the Armenians

A Study in Still Life.—The Country Hotel

An Experiment With Policeman Hogan

The Passing of the Poet

Self-made Men

A Model Dialogue

Back to the Bush

Reflections on Riding

Saloonio

Half-hours with the Poets

PART I

PART II

PART III

A, B, and C

Acknowledgments







LITERARY LAPSES







My Financial Career

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager.

I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.

"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly, "alone." I don't know why I said "alone."

"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.

"Yes," he said.

"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say "alone" again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.

"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.

"We are safe from interruption here," he said; "sit down."

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.

"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.

"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.

"To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, "I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank."

The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

"A large account, I suppose," he said.

"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly."

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

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