Further Foolishness Part 1

Further Foolishness.

by Stephen Leac.o.c.k.

Preface

Many years ago when I was a boy at school, we had over our cla.s.s an ancient and spectacled schoolmaster who was as kind at heart as he was ferocious in appearance, and whose memory has suggested to me the t.i.tle of this book.

It was his practice, on any outburst of gaiety in the cla.s.s-room, to chase us to our seats with a bamboo cane and to shout at us in defiance:

_Now, then, any further foolishness?_

I find by experience that there are quite a number of indulgent readers who are good enough to adopt the same expectant att.i.tude towards me now.

STEPHEN LEAc.o.c.k McGILL UNIVERSITY MONTREAL November 1, 1916

I. Stories Shorter Still

Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.

(I) AN IRREDUCIBLE DETECTIVE STORY

HANGED BY A HAIR OR A MURDER MYSTERY MINIMISED

The mystery had now reached its climax. First, the man had been undoubtedly murdered. Secondly, it was absolutely certain that no conceivable person had done it.

It was therefore time to call in the great detective.

He gave one searching glance at the corpse. In a moment he whipped out a microscope.

"Ha! ha!" he said, as he picked a hair off the lapel of the dead man's coat. "The mystery is now solved."

He held up the hair.

"Listen," he said, "we have only to find the man who lost this hair and the criminal is in our hands."

The inexorable chain of logic was complete.

The detective set himself to the search.

For four days and nights he moved, un.o.bserved, through the streets of New York scanning closely every face he pa.s.sed, looking for a man who had lost a hair.

On the fifth day he discovered a man, disguised as a tourist, his head enveloped in a steamer cap that reached below his ears. The man was about to go on board the _Gloritania_.

The detective followed him on board.

"Arrest him!" he said, and then drawing himself to his full height, he brandished aloft the hair.

"This is his," said the great detective. "It proves his guilt."

"Remove his hat," said the s.h.i.+p's captain sternly.

They did so.

The man was entirely bald.

"Ha!" said the great detective without a moment of hesitation. "He has committed not one murder but about a million."

(II) A COMPRESSED OLD ENGLISH NOVEL

SWEARWORD THE UNp.r.o.nOUNCEABLE

CHAPTER ONE AND ONLY

"Ods bodikins!" exclaimed Swearword the Saxon, wiping his mailed brow with his iron hand, "a fair morn withal!

Methinks twert lithlier to rest me in yon glade than to foray me forth in yon fray! Twert it not?"

But there happened to be a real Anglo-Saxon standing by.

"Where in heaven's name," he said in sudden pa.s.sion, "did you get that line of English?"

"Churl!" said Swearword, "it is Anglo-Saxon."

"You're a liar!" shouted the Saxon, "it is not. It is Harvard College, Soph.o.m.ore Year, Option No. 6."

Swearword, now in like fury, threw aside his hauberk, his baldrick, and his needlework on the gra.s.s.

"Lay on!" said Swearword.

"Have at you!" cried the Saxon.

They laid on and had at one another.

Swearword was killed.

Thus luckily the whole story was cut off on the first page and ended.

(III) A CONDENSED INTERMINABLE NOVEL

FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE OR A THOUSAND PAGES FOR A DOLLAR

NOTE.-This story originally contained two hundred and fifty thousand words. But by a marvellous feat of condensation it is reduced, without the slightest loss, to a hundred and six words.