Free The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks by Robertson Davies Page B

crashes and wrist-paralyzing convulsions of sound were never heard. The object of learning all this, I was told, was so that if, in later life, one broke down in the performance of a concerto, one could always fill in with a few spasms of Czerny; the musically ignorant in the audience would never notice the difference, and the musically élite would understand that the pianist was perfectly capable of playing anything.
• O F T RANSPLANTED T RADITION •
    T HERE ’ LL ALWAYS BE an England while there is a U.S.A. I looked through a quantity of American magazines this afternoon and was amazed by the number of shaving creams, foods, leather goods and types of booze which are advertised with pictures of Windsor Castle, London clubs, Scotsmen in native dress and similar phenomena, suggestive of Ye Merrie Olde Englande.The more fiercely the socialists hack at Englysshe Tradition the more avidly do their American cousins embrace it, fake it, and attach it to their consumer goods. In Britain the stately homes are turned into hostels for Labour Youth Cycling Clubs, and the velvet lawns of noble lords are ripped up by miners pretending to search for coal; meanwhile in Akron, Ohio, Antonio Spigoni shaves himself with a soap which he thinks gives him an Old Etonian appearance, and in South Bend, Indiana, Mrs. Brunnhilde Klotz stuffs her friends with Olde Nell Gwynne Tea Biscuits (made in St. Louis, Mo.). A mad world, my masters, and one half of it doesn’t know how the other half lives!
• O F THE P OTENT O NION •
    I WAS BROUGHT UP to believe that it was dangerous, if not downright suicidal, to eat onions. From time to time, just out of perversity, I would eat a few in a restaurant, and they always gave me pains, but they were so delicious that I could not resist them. Now, after deep thought, I have decided to conquer onions, and so yesterday I bought a very small bottle of pickled onions, and consumed two of them at lunch. I felt no ill effects during the afternoon, and so I ate two more with my evening meal. I still live, and unless I drop dead I shall continue this homeopathic approach to onions, increasing the dose each day until I am able to pick up a big, red Spanish onion and eat it like an apple.… The chief objection to onions, of course, is that they make one smell like an onion oneself. The breath of an onion-eater is a powerful weapon of offence. I am told that a glass of milk kills the smell of onions on the breath, but this must be a well-guarded secret or a lie, for I never see any onion-eaters drinkingmilk, and their blow-torch breaths can be felt at forty feet.
• O F THE M ADNESS OF L OVE •
    T HE PAPERS ARE full of news this morning about a gravedigger who killed a girl for love. Indeed, for several weeks I have been reading about murderers and suicides who are all described as “love-crazed.” I wonder how many love-crazed people there really are? As I walk through the streets, what portion of the people I meet are in this distressing and dangerous condition? Quite a few, it appears. But from my newspaper reading I can make a few deductions about them. Most love-crazed people appear to live in boarding-houses, and a majority of them earn less than $2,000 a year. They are not extensively educated, as a usual thing, and none of them toil under the burden of a mighty intellect. But they are great lovers, and very handy with knives, pistols and blunt instruments. Very few of them have steady jobs, and not many of them belong to the skilled trades. They do not eat regularly. (It is a curious fact that most of them have been grabbing a snack—a hamburger and a soft drink or something of that kind—within three hours before they commit murder.) Their physical health is good, but they tend to be puny above the eyebrows. They are under 35. They need a good hobby and a larger circle of female acquaintance.
• O F B RITISH S OCIALISM •
    I WAS TALKING TO a man before dinner who had recently returned from England,