Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock (the false prince TXT) 📕

and that anyway it was the rottenest kind of kerosene he had ever seen and no more use than so much molasses. So that point was settled.

Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not. Absolutely not. It was not affected in the least, though how anybody who knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his mind was in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell. The engaging of Mr. Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have heard preach in the new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean Drone’s head. It was merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It was felt very generally by the wardens that, in these days of specialization, the rector was covering too wide a field, and that if he should abandon some of the lesser duties of his office, he might devote his energies more intently to the Infant Class. That was all. You may hear him there any afternoon, talking to them, if you will stand under the maple trees and listen through the open windows of the new Infant School.

And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for attention⁠—well, if I want to find listeners who can hear and understand about the great spaces of Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to face with the blue eyes of the Infant Class, fresh from the infinity of spaces greater still. Talk of grownup people all you like, but for listeners let me have the Infant Class with their pinafores and their Teddy Bears and their feet not even touching the floor, and Mr. Uttermost may preach to his heart’s content of the newer forms of doubt revealed by the higher criticism.

So you will understand that the Dean’s mind is, if anything, even keener, and his head even clearer than before. And if you want proof of it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the Greek: he has told me that he finds that he can read, with the greatest ease, works in the Greek that seemed difficult before. Because his head is so clear now.

And sometimes⁠—when his head is very clear⁠—as he sits there reading beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond, and his wife’s voice.

VII The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin

Judge Pepperleigh lived in a big house with hardwood floors and a wide piazza that looked over the lake from the top of Oneida Street.

Every day about half past five he used to come home from his office in the Mariposa Court House. On some days as he got near the house he would call out to his wife:

“Almighty Moses, Martha! who left the sprinkler on the grass?”

On other days he would call to her from quite a little distance off: “Hullo, mother! Got any supper for a hungry man?”

And Mrs. Pepperleigh never knew which it would be. On the days when he swore at the sprinkler you could see his spectacles flash like dynamite. But on the days when he called: “Hullo, mother,” they were simply irradiated with kindliness.

Some days, I say, he would cry out with a perfect whine of indignation: “Suffering Caesar! has that infernal dog torn up those geraniums again?” And other days you would hear him singing out: “Hullo, Rover! Well, doggie, well, old fellow!”

In the same way at breakfast, the judge, as he looked over the morning paper, would sometimes leap to his feet with a perfect howl of suffering, and cry: “Everlasting Moses! the Liberals have carried East Elgin.” Or else he would lean back from the breakfast table with the most good-humoured laugh you ever heard and say: “Ha! ha! the Conservatives have carried South Norfolk.”

And yet he was perfectly logical, when you come to think of it. After all, what is more annoying to a sensitive, highly-strung man than an infernal sprinkler playing all over the place, and what more agreeable to a good-natured, even-tempered fellow than a well-prepared supper? Or, what is more likeable than one’s good, old, affectionate dog bounding down the path from sheer delight at seeing you⁠—or more execrable than an infernal whelp that has torn up the geraniums and is too old to keep, anyway?

As for politics, well, it all seemed reasonable enough. When the Conservatives got in anywhere, Pepperleigh laughed and enjoyed it, simply because it does one good to see a straight, fine, honest fight where the best man wins. When a Liberal got in, it made him mad, and he said so⁠—not, mind you, from any political bias, for his office forbid it⁠—but simply because one can’t bear to see the country go absolutely to the devil.

I suppose, too, it was partly the effect of sitting in court all day listening to cases. One gets what you might call the judicial temper of mind. Pepperleigh had it so strongly developed that I’ve seen him kick a hydrangea pot to pieces with his foot because the accursed thing wouldn’t flower. He once threw the canary cage clear into the lilac bushes because the “blasted bird wouldn’t stop singing.” It was a straight case of judicial temper. Lots of judges have it, developed in just the same broad, all-round way as with Judge Pepperleigh.

I think it must be passing sentences that does it. Anyway, Pepperleigh had the aptitude for passing sentences so highly perfected that he spent his whole time at it inside of court and out. I’ve heard him hand out sentences for the Sultan of Turkey and Mrs. Pankhurst and the Emperor of Germany that made one’s blood run cold. He would sit there on the piazza of a summer evening reading the paper, with dynamite sparks flying from his spectacles as he sentenced the Czar of Russia to ten years in the salt mines⁠—and made it fifteen a few minutes afterwards. Pepperleigh always read