“He is a good old sort, Johnson; it seemed an easy thing. I said I would. Since that time I have been thinking how to do it. As a matter of fact, I have not thought of much else. Maybe you can suggest something.”
I was feeling in a good working mood the next morning.
“Pilson,” said I to myself, “shall have the benefit of this. He does not need anything boisterously funny. A few playfully witty remarks on the subject will be the ideal.”
I lit a pipe and sat down to think. At half-past twelve, having to write some letters before going out to lunch, I dismissed the Fiscal question from my mind.
But not for long. It worried me all the afternoon. I thought, maybe, something would come to me in the evening. I wasted all that evening, and I wasted all the following morning. Everything has its amusing side, I told myself. One turns out comic stories about funerals, about weddings. Hardly a misfortune that can happen to mankind but has produced its comic literature. An American friend of mine once took a contract from the Editor of an Insurance Journal to write four humorous stories; one was to deal with an earthquake, the second with a cyclone, the third with a flood, and the fourth with a thunderstorm. And more amusing stories I have never read. What is the matter with the Fiscal question?
I myself have written lightly on Bime-metallism. Home Rule we used to be merry over in the eighties. I remember one delightful evening at the Codgers’ Hall. It would have been more delightful still, but for a raw-boned Irishman, who rose towards eleven o’clock and requested to be informed if any other speaker was wishful to make any more jokes on the subject of Ould Ireland; because, if so, the raw-boned gentleman was prepared to save time by waiting and dealing with them altogether. But if not, then—so the raw-boned gentleman announced—his intention was to go for the last speaker and the last speaker but two at once and without further warning.
No other humourist rising, the raw-boned gentleman proceeded to make good his threat, with the result that the fun degenerated somewhat. Even on the Boer War we used to whisper jokes to one another in quiet places. In this Fiscal question there must be fun. Where is it?
For days I thought of little else. My laundress—as we call them in the Temple—noticed my trouble.
“Mrs. Wilkins,” I confessed, “I am trying to think of something innocently amusing to say on the Fiscal question.”
“I’ve ’eard about it,” she said, “but I don’t ’ave much time to read the papers. They want to make us pay more for our food, don’t they?”