75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

Making a Magazine (Stephen Leacock)

I dreamt one night not long ago that I was the editor of a great illustrated magazine. I offer no apology for this: I have often dreamt even worse of myself than that.

In any case I didn’t do it on purpose: very often, I admit, I try to dream that I am President Wilson [341] , or Mr. Bryan [342] , or the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, or a share of stock in the Standard Oil Co. for the sheer luxury and cheapness of it. But this was an accident. I had been sitting up late at night writing personal reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln [343] . I was writing against time. The presidential election was drawing nearer every day and the market for reminiscences of Lincoln was extremely brisk, but, of course, might collapse any moment. Writers of my class have to consider this sort of thing. For instance, in the middle of Lent, I find that I can do fairly well with ‘Recent Lights on the Scriptures.’ Then, of course, when the hot weather comes, the market for Christmas poetry opens and there’s a fairly good demand for voyages in the Polar Seas. Later on, in the quiet of the autumn I generally write some ‘Unpublished Letters from Goethe [344] to Balzac [345] ,’ and that sort of thing.

But it’s a wearing occupation, full of disappointments, and needing the very keenest business instinct to watch every turn of the market.

I am afraid that this is a digression. I only wanted to explain how a man’s mind could be so harassed and overwrought as to make him dream that he was an editor.

I knew at once in my dream where and what I was. As soon as I saw the luxury of the surroundings, – the spacious room with its vaulted ceiling, lit with stained glass, – the beautiful mahogany table at which I sat writing with a ten-dollar fountain pen, the gift of the manufacturers, – on embossed stationery, the gift of the embossers, – on which I was setting down words at eight and a half cents a word and deliberately picking out short ones through sheer business acuteness; – as soon as I saw; – this I said to myself —

‘I am an editor, and this is my editorial sanctum.’ Not that I have ever seen an editor or a sanctum. But I have sent so many manuscripts to so many editors and received them back with such unfailing promptness, that the scene before me was as familiar to my eye as if I had been wide awake.

As I thus mused, revelling in the charm of my surroundings and admiring the luxurious black alpaca coat and the dainty dickie which I wore, there was a knock at the door.

A beautiful creature entered. She evidently belonged to the premises, for she wore no hat and there were white cuffs upon her wrists. She has that indescribable beauty of effectiveness such as is given to hospital nurses.

This, I thought to myself, must be my private secretary.

‘I hope I don’t interrupt you, sir,’ said the girl.

‘My dear child,’ I answered, speaking in that fatherly way in which an editor might well address a girl almost young enough to be his wife, ‘pray do not mention it. Sit down. You must be fatigued after your labours of the morning. Let me ring for a club sandwich.’

‘I came to say, sir,’ the secretary went on, ‘that there’s a person downstairs waiting to see you.’

My manner changed at once.

‘Is he a gentleman or a contributor?’ I asked.

‘He doesn’t look exactly like a gentleman.’

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘He’s a contributor for sure. Tell him to wait. Ask the caretaker to lock him in the coal cellar, and kindly slip out and see if there’s a policeman on the beat in case I need him.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the secretary.

I waited for about an hour, wrote a few editorials advocating the rights of the people, smoked some Turkish cigarettes, drank a glass of sherry, and ate part of an anchovy sandwich.

Then I rang the bell. ‘Bring that man here,’ I said.

Presently they brought him in. He was a timid-looking man with an embarrassed manner and all the low cunning of an author stamped on his features. I could see a bundle of papers in his hand, and I knew that the scoundrel was carrying a manuscript.

‘Now, sir,’ I said, ‘speak quickly. What’s your business?’

‘I’ve got here a manuscript,’ he began.

‘What!’ I shouted at him. ‘A manuscript! You’d dare, would you! Bringing manuscripts in here! What sort of a place do you think this is?’

‘It’s the manuscript of a story,’ he faltered.