ma Ltt alll Para en oor es ee ran a

| URE AT CUTCETL TE TUPLTITETV TT (RR TT

E
e
3
4 By STEPHEN LEACOCK a matter of inquiry the result would repaper the entire apartment. I expos- done in a spontaneous way without
2 eas be embarrassing and tedious. tulated in vain. premeditation.
s As it is now pretty generally known The shooting is generally done in . “The paper,” I said, “is only ten It was followed a little later by the ©
: that I have murdered the landlord of connection with a rise of rent, and years old.” “It is,” he said, “but wall rise’ of rents held -as a welcome to
Our flat, I feel that I should like to nothing more needs to be said about it. paper has gone-up to double its value the Prince of Wales. No better congra-
3 Make some sort of public explanation “I am increasing your rent another since that time.” “Very good, then,” tulation could have been planned.
E of the matter. $10.00 a month,” says the landlord. I said firmly, “you must raise the rent My landlord, alas, remained outside
4 I have been assured on all sides that “All right,” says the tenant, “I'll shoot twenty dollars a month for the paper.” of all this. He made no increase in his
there is no need to do this, but my you.” Sometimes he does, sometimes “T shall not,” he answered. The inci- rent. “I have,” he said, “my ten per-
Own feelings on the question were so he forgets to. dent led to a distinct coolness between cent, and that is enough.”
fc acute that I felt myself compelled to But my own case was quite differ- us for some months. “ : I know now that the paresis or coa-
d _ Call upon the’ Superintendent of Police ent. The proposal of the National Ten- The next episodes were of a more gulation must have overwhelmed one
e 7 and offer him an exact account of what ant League to give me a gold medal pronounced character. Everybody re- entire lobe or hemisphere of his head.
d T had done. He told me that there is next Saturday has brought things to calls the great increases of rent due I was meditating action. =
ee absolutely no need to offer any expla- a head and forces an explanation. to the terrific rise in building costs. My The crisis came last month. A sharp
yaa Nation at all. It is neither customary I recall distinctly the time, now landlord refused to raise the rent of rise in rent had been very properly in-
e hor desirable. some five years ago, when my wife my flat. stituted to counterbalance the fall in
a “You have killed your landlord,” he and I first took our flat. The landlord “The cost of building,” I said, “has the German mark. It was based quite
Said, “very good, what of it?” I asked showed us over it himself, and I am. increased at least one hundred _per- evidently on the soundest business rea-
; him whether it was not, in a sense, a free to confess that there was nothing cent.” : soning. : :
fe) Matter for the law to deal with. But in his manner, or very little indeed, to “Very good,” he answered, “but I If the fall in the mark is not coun-
e he shook his head. “In what way?” he suggest anything out of the normal. am not building. I have always been tered in this way, it is plain that we
1- asked, : Only one small incident stuck in my getting ten percent on my investment are undone. The cheap German mark
D- _I told him that I felt that the affair mind. He apologized for the lack of on this property, and I am still getting will enable the Germans to take away
1 Was putting me in a somewhat false cupboard space. ite our houses.
33 Position; that the congratulations that “There are not enough cupboards in “Think of your wife,” I said. I waited for three days, looking in
id have been receiving from my friends, this flat,” he said. “I won’t,” he answered. vain for a notice of increase in my
=| and even from strangers, were perhaps, It made me, slightly uncomfortable “It is your duty,” I went on, “to rent. :
‘by if the full circumstances were known, to hear him speak in this way. “But think of her. Let me tell you that only Then I went to visit my landlord
- hardly merited: in short, that I should look,” I said, “how large and airy the yesterday I saw in the papers a letter in his office. I admit that I was armed,
like a’ certain publicity given to the pantry is. It is at least four feet each from a landlord, one of the most beau- . but in extenuation I want to say that
or Whole surroundings of the act. way.” tiful letters I ever saw (from a land- I knew that I had to deal with an ab-
a- “Very good,” said the Superinten- He shook his head and repeated that lord), in which he said the rise in the errated man, one-half of whose brain
T dent, “you are entitled to fill out a the cupboards were small. “TI must cost of building materials compelled was now coagulated.
1e form if you wish to do so.” He search- build in better ones,” he said. : him to think of his wife and children. I wasted no words on preliminaries.
p- ed among his papers. Two months later he built in new It was a touching appeal.”: ““You have seen,” I said, “this fall
e- “Did you say,” he asked, “that you cupboards. It gave me a shock of sur- “I don’t care,” my landlord answer- of the German mark.” :
at have killed your landlord, or that you. prise—a touch of the uncanny—to not- el enmisiat Tiare : a “Yes,” he answered, “what of it?”
1€ are going to kill him?” “I have killed ice that he did not raise the rent. “Are Hao Teeta eM Or marnied® ice “Simply this,” I said. “Are you going
id him,” I said firmly. “Very good,” said you not raising the rent because of the I think ict as age to raise my rent or are you not?”
the = = 3 ked. “No,” he said ink, at this moment that the idea Maas, 3 a Pe,
Officer, ‘‘we use separate forms. cupboards?’ I asked. ° ’ Aesth pormirned iat Fh No,” he said doggedly, “I am not.
He gave me a lon inted slip with “they only cost me fifty dollars.” “But = Bee Oia soa gnae, TORN I raised the revolver and fired. He
1e g printed slip y He : Re might be put out of the wa matted Hs :
; blanks to fill in—m cupation - my dear fellow,” I objected, “surely 8 P ube was sitting sideways to me as I did so.
on. y age, occup 2 vas Wears There followed the episode of Nov- ses -
ad Teasons (if any) for the killing, etc. the interest of fifty dollars is sixty dol- ber. M qi at 7 e Me I fired, in all, four shots. I could see
5 “What shall I put,” I asked, “under lars a year?” : er ae J PeAGeEs ve _ remember through the smoke that one, at least, of
= the heading of reasons?” He admitted this, but said that he ¢ ie eae estos rents made _the shots had cut his waistcoat into
of “I think,” he answered, “that it will would rather not raise the rent. Think- 2 a. e ree rmistice Day. My land- strips, a second had ripped off his col-
€ better to put simply, ‘no reasons,’ ing it over, I decided that his conduct ord refused to join in the celebra- lar, while the third and fourth had cut
Or if you like, the ‘usual reasons’!” might be due to incipient paresis or tions. through his braces at the back. He
With that he bowed me. politely out coagulation of the arteries of the head. _ This lack of patriotism in the fellow was visibly in a state of collapse. It
- of his office, expres sing, as he did so, At that time I had no idea of killing irritated me greatly. The same thing was doubtful if he could reach the
the hope that I would bury the land- him. That came later. happened at the time of the rise of ‘street. But even if he could, it was
‘lord and not leave him lying about. I recall no incident of. importance rents that was instituted to celebrate certain that he couldn’t walk upon it.
© me the interview. was unsatis- till the spring of the year following. the visit of Marshal Foch, and the later I left him as he was and reported,
factory. I am well aware that the My landlord appeared unexpectedly rise — twenty-five percent, if I remem- as I have said, to the police.
Uperintendent was within the strict one day with apologies for intruding ber rightly — that was made as a tri- If the Tenant League medal is given
nicety of the law. No doubt if every (a fact which of itself seemed suspi- bute to the ex-servicemen. to me, I want it to be with full under-
cious), and said that he..proposed: to.

By JOHN WEIR

One hundred years ago, on Dec. 30,
1869, Stephen Leacock was born. His
birthplace, like that of many another
Canadian, was outside the borders of
Canada; he first saw light at Swanmoor,
Hants, which is in England.

Coming to Canada with his parents
when he was seven, he was not pam-
pered. He first learned the hard life
on an Ontario back country farm, just
as later he learned what it was like to
work one’s way through college when
one wasn’t born to wealth. He overcame
hardships aplenty’by unrelenting toil to
acquire an education in Upper Canada
College and the University of Toronto,
which he finished in 1891. After work-
ing several years as a school teacher,
he received an opportunity to continue
his studies, and took a course in poli-
tical economy at the University of
Chicago.

In 1916 he was appointed to the staff

* of McGill University in Montreal, where

he lectured on political economy until
his compulsory retirement in 1936. He
maintained a home, which is now a
museum, in Orillia, Ontario, and he

-died there in 1944.

Those are the bare bones of the bio-
graphy of Stephen Butler Leacock, and
they give only a hint of the background
and life of the man who is among the
few Canadians that shine in the galaxy
of world literature. Just to give the
bare bones of his literary career, let

_ Case of, the, shooting of a landlord were
Le ASS. Die *
Be iG? as

£ : ,

(iit ECO Sa

HRPORTSSS pt eqete

us note that his first work—one of
several books on political economy—

was published in 1906. However, it was .

not Leacock the bourgeois economist
that rose to world fame, but Leacock
the humorist and satirist—and the first
collection in that genre, Nonsense
Novels, appeared in 1911.

Leacock’s humor struck a responsive
chord among his contemporaries and
lives today because it is humanist, his
satire brought response in his time and
survives in ours because it is social.

Stephen Leacock spoofed the Victor-
ian vanities, and ridiculed the bourgeois
hypocrisies. Although he never went
beyond the bounds of capitalist society,
he saw it for what it was—and was
sad about it. In his lifetime a new so-
ciety, destined to replace the old,
emerged, and while he didn’t espouse

‘it, let it be said to his honor that he

didn’t succumb to the red-baiters and
anti-Sovieteers: you won’t find any of
that in his writings.

Half a century has passed since The
Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich
and/Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
were published. But we haven’t had
another such a mocking portrayal of
the “‘bourgeoisification” of the church,
of the corruption of parliamentary poli-
tics, of the adaptation of the education-

al system to capitalist purposes, and of

the evolution of the Scrooges of the
19th century into the tycoons of the
20th. If the “muckraker’ stops short,
if he doesn’t become a denouncer and

IMLS 3

Canada honors Stephen Leacock

challenger, it is because of the author’s
own limited circumstances, perhaps,
but he leads the reader to deny the im-
moral values and consequences of capi-
talist society if not actually to fight
against it.

Stephen Leacock loved and knew
people, loved and lived the good life.
He was for the underdog and against
the bully. He was for peace. He was
against the dollar patriot and the poli-

' tical shyster. Nominally a Conservative,

he refused nomination to public: office
under the auspices of that party. Many
of his satirical pieces ring true today—
who can read “My Affair with my Land- -
lord,’ for example, without at once
drawing a parallel with the arguments
of the Establishment today?

Leacock is honored in our country.
There is an annual Leacock award for
the best humorous Canadian writing of
the year. A postage stamp has been is-
sued with his portrait in this centennial
year. The house he lived in is now a
museum, and a good one. Various
events have been organized to pay tri-
bute to his great contribution.

But the greatest honor paid to him
is that his books are read throughout the
land—nay, in translation throughout
the world—and the good people, old and
young, laugh with Leacock; they pick
up the pearls of wisdom which he
sowed so profusely through his writ-
ings; and they hold him in their hearts
as they seek the pathways that lead to
the better tomorrows.

os It was-purely a patriotic movement,
fii elite sui Saucy WHI -OISM «Yig Sne” ans
et? oltsmolgib. bons sbsid isarion 33

‘standing. of the case.

2noisilogsn cu asi til ert yin PACIFIG TRIBY E-JANUARY:2, 1970—Page.5

Bg tN? | SS RA Ube ESAT ID