Psmith in the City by P. G. Wodehouse (world of reading txt) ๐
Description
Mike Jackson is a rising cricket star who finds his dreams of studying and playing at Cambridge upset by news of his fatherโs financial troubles. He takes a job with the New Asiatic Bank in London. He arrives to find that his dapper and verbose young friend Psmith is also a new employee, and together they navigate early twentieth century office life, make the best of their position and squeeze in a little cricket from time to time.
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the twentieth century. After leaving school, he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years.
Psmith in the City was originally serialized in The Captain magazine in 1908 and 1909 as The New Fold and is the sequel to Mike, an earlier novel by Wodehouse.
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- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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โI wonder,โ said Mr. Waller, โif you would care to come out to lunch. I generally go about this time, and Mr. Rossiter, I know, does not go out till two. I thought perhaps that, being unused to the City, you might have some difficulty in finding your way about.โ
โItโs awfully good of you,โ said Mike. โI should like to.โ
The other led the way through the streets and down obscure alleys till they came to a chophouse. Here one could have the doubtful pleasure of seeing oneโs chop in its various stages of evolution. Mr. Waller ordered lunch with the care of one to whom lunch is no slight matter. Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one has had for lunch.
At intervals during the meal Mr. Waller talked. Mike was content to listen. There was something soothing about the grey-bearded one.
โWhat sort of a man is Bickersdyke?โ asked Mike.
โA very able man. A very able man indeed. Iโm afraid heโs not popular in the office. A little inclined, perhaps, to be hard on mistakes. I can remember the time when he was quite different. He and I were fellow clerks in Morton and Blatherwickโs. He got on better than I did. A great fellow for getting on. They say he is to be the Unionist candidate for Kenningford when the time comes. A great worker, but perhaps not quite the sort of man to be generally popular in an office.โ
โHeโs a blighter,โ was Mikeโs verdict. Mr. Waller made no comment. Mike was to learn later that the manager and the cashier, despite the fact that they had been together in less prosperous daysโ โor possibly because of itโ โwere not on very good terms. Mr. Bickersdyke was a man of strong prejudices, and he disliked the cashier, whom he looked down upon as one who had climbed to a lower rung of the ladder than he himself had reached.
As the hands of the chophouse clock reached a quarter to two, Mr. Waller rose, and led the way back to the office, where they parted for their respective desks. Gratitude for any good turn done to him was a leading characteristic of Mikeโs nature, and he felt genuinely grateful to the cashier for troubling to seek him out and be friendly to him.
His three-quarters-of-an-hour absence had led to the accumulation of a small pile of letters on his desk. He sat down and began to work them off. The addresses continued to exercise a fascination for him. He was miles away from the office, speculating on what sort of a man J. B. Garside, Esq., was, and whether he had a good time at his house in Worcestershire, when somebody tapped him on the shoulder.
He looked up.
Standing by his side, immaculately dressed as ever, with his eyeglass fixed and a gentle smile on his face, was Psmith.
Mike stared.
โCommerce,โ said Psmith, as he drew off his lavender gloves, โhas claimed me for her own. Comrade of old, I, too, have joined this blighted institution.โ
As he spoke, there was a whirring noise in the immediate neighbourhood, and Mr. Rossiter buzzed out from his den with the esprit and animation of a clockwork toy.
โWhoโs here?โ said Psmith with interest, removing his eyeglass, polishing it, and replacing it in his eye.
โMr. Jackson,โ exclaimed Mr. Rossiter. โI really must ask you to be good enough to come in from your lunch at the proper time. It was fully seven minutes to two when you returned, andโ โโ
โThat little more,โ sighed Psmith, โand how much is it!โ
โWho are you?โ snapped Mr. Rossiter, turning on him.
โI shall be delighted, Comradeโ โโ
โRossiter,โ said Mike, aside.
โComrade Rossiter. I shall be delighted to furnish you with particulars of my family history. As follows. Soon after the Norman Conquest, a certain Sieur de Psmith grew tired of workโ โa family failing, alas!โ โand settled down in this country to live peacefully for the remainder of his life on what he could extract from the local peasantry. He may be described as the founder of the family which ultimately culminated in Me. Passing onโ โโ
Mr. Rossiter refused to pass on.
โWhat are you doing here? What have you come for?โ
โWork,โ said Psmith, with simple dignity. โI am now a member of the staff of this bank. Its interests are my interests. Psmith, the individual, ceases to exist, and there springs into being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bankโs chain; Psmith, the Worker. I shall not spare myself,โ he proceeded earnestly. โI shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay. Whose is that form sitting on the steps of the bank in the morning, waiting eagerly for the place to open? It is the form of Psmith, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which bends over a ledger long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to dine at Lyonsโ Popular Cafรฉ? It is the face of Psmith, the Worker.โ
โIโ โโ began Mr. Rossiter.
โI tell you,โ continued Psmith, waving aside the interruption and tapping the head of the department rhythmically in the region of the second waistcoat-button with a long finger, โI tell you, Comrade Rossiter, that you have got hold of a good man. You and I together, not forgetting Comrade Jackson, the pet of the Smart Set, will toil early and late till we boost up this Postage Department into a shining model of what a Postage Department should be. What that is, at present, I do not exactly know. However. Excursion trains will be run from distant shires to see this Postage Department. American visitors to London will do it before going
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