Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy: 'Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets''

By Stephen Leacock

Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England. He was the third of eleven children.

The family emigrated to Canada in 1876, settling on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario. There Leacock was home-schooled until, funded by his grandfather, he was enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto. Academically he was very strong. In 1887, at age 17, he became head boy and then proceeded on to the University of Toronto to study languages and literature. Despite completing two years of study in only one, he was obliged to leave the university because his father, an alcoholic, had abandoned the family and finances could not be stretched to continue his attendance. Leacock now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher with a regular income.

He worked at Upper Canada College from 1889 through 1899 and later resumed his studies part-time at the University of Toronto, graduating with a B A in 1891. It was during this period that he was first published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper. But his passion was now economics and political theory. In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903.

Leacock had married Beatrix Hamilton in 1900 and 15 years later the couple had their only child, Stephen. In time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.

Accepting a post at McGill University Leacock would remain there until he retired in 1936. In 1906, he wrote ‘Elements of Political Science’, quickly adopted as a standard textbook for the next two decades and his most profitable book. He also began public speaking and lecturing, and took a year's leave of absence in 1907 to speak throughout Canada on the subject of national unity.

Leacock had submitted humourous articles to the Toronto magazine Grip in 1894, and was soon published in other Canadian and US magazines. In 1910, he printed privately a collection of these as ‘Literary Lapses’. Acquired by the British publisher, John Lane, it was released in London and New York. He was now a commercially successful writer. There soon followed ‘Nonsense Novels’ (1911) and the sentimental favourite, ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’ (1912). His ‘Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich’ (1914) is a darker collection that satirizes city life. Collections of sketches continued to be published almost annually, filled with a mixture of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire.

In later life, he wrote on the art of humour writing and published biographies on Twain and Dickens. Together with continued speaking tours he also added to his non-fiction with many well-regarded and award-winning volumes on Canada.

Politically Leacock was a social conservative and a partisan Conservative. He opposed women’s right to vote and had a varied record on non-English immigration. He was a champion of Empire but an advocate of social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views towards blacks and Indigenous peoples.

Leacock has for some time been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often quoted that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada. For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world.

Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada. He was 74. He was buried in the St George the Martyr Churchyard, Sutton, Ontario.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803543383

Stephen Leacock

Award-winning Canadian humorist and writer Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was the author of more than 50 literary works, and between 1915 and 1925 was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. Leacock’s fictional works include classics like Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, and Literary Lapses. In addition to his humor writings, Leacock was an accomplished political theorist, publishing such works as Elements of Political Science and My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada, for which he won the Governor General's Award for writing in 1937. Leacock’s life continues to be commemorated through the awarding of the Leacock Medal for Humour and with an annual literary festival in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

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Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy by Stephen Leacock

Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England.  He was the third of eleven children.

The family emigrated to Canada in 1876, settling on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario.  There Leacock was home-schooled until, funded by his grandfather, he was enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto.  Academically he was very strong.  In 1887, at age 17, he became head boy and then proceeded on to the University of Toronto to study languages and literature.  Despite completing two years of study in only one, he was obliged to leave the university because his father, an alcoholic, had abandoned the family and finances could not be stretched to continue his attendance.  Leacock now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher with a regular income.

He worked at Upper Canada College from 1889 through 1899 and later resumed his studies part-time at the University of Toronto, graduating with a B A in 1891.  It was during this period that he was first published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper.  But his passion was now economics and political theory.  In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903.

Leacock had married Beatrix Hamilton in 1900 and 15 years later the couple had their only child, Stephen.  In time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.

Accepting a post at McGill University Leacock would remain there until he retired in 1936.  In 1906, he wrote ‘Elements of Political Science’, quickly adopted as a standard textbook for the next two decades and his most profitable book.  He also began public speaking and lecturing, and took a year's leave of absence in 1907 to speak throughout Canada on the subject of national unity.

Leacock had submitted humourous articles to the Toronto magazine Grip in 1894, and was soon published in other Canadian and US magazines.  In 1910, he printed privately a collection of these as ‘Literary Lapses’.  Acquired by the British publisher, John Lane, it was released in London and New York.   He was now a commercially successful writer.  There soon followed ‘Nonsense Novels’ (1911) and the sentimental favourite, ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’ (1912).  His ‘Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich’ (1914) is a darker collection that satirizes city life.  Collections of sketches continued to be published almost annually, filled with a mixture of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire.

In later life, he wrote on the art of humour writing and published biographies on Twain and Dickens.  Together with continued speaking tours he also added to his non-fiction with many well-regarded and award-winning volumes on Canada.

Politically Leacock was a social conservative and a partisan Conservative.  He opposed women’s right to vote and had a varied record on non-English immigration.  He was a champion of Empire but an advocate of social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views towards blacks and Indigenous peoples.

Leacock has for some time been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often quoted that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada.  For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world.

Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada.  He was 74.  He was buried in the St George the Martyr Churchyard, Sutton, Ontario.

Index of Contents

PREFACE

I.—SPOOF. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating! Perplexing!

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

II.—THE READING PUBLIC. A BOOK STORE STUDY

III.—AFTERNOON ADVENTURES AT MY CLUB

1.—The Anecdotes of Dr. So and So

2.—The Shattered Health of Mr. Podge

3.—The Amazing Travels of Mr. Yarner

4.—The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer

5.—The Reminiscences of Mr. Apricot

6.—The Last Man out of Europe

7.—The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks

8.—The Ground Floor

9.—The Hallucination of Mr. Butt

IV-RAM SPUDD THE NEW WORLD SINGER.

V.—ARISTOCRATIC ANECDOTES OR LITTLE STORIES OF GREAT

VI.—EDUCATION MADE AGREEABLE OR THE DIVERSIONS OF A

VII.—AN EVERY-DAY EXPERIENCE

VIII—TRUTHFUL ORATORY

IX.—OUR LITERARY BUREAU

X.—SPEEDING UP BUSINESS

XI.—WHO IS ALSO WHO

XII.—PASSIONATE PARAGRAPHS

XIII.—WEEJEE THE PET DOG

XIV.—SIDELIGHTS ON THE SUPERMEN

XV.—THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

XVI—THE FIRST NEWSPAPER

XVII—IN THE GOOD TIME AFTER THE WAR

STEPHEN LEACOCK – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE

The prudent husbandman, after having taken from his field all the straw that is there, rakes it over with a wooden rake and gets as much again. The wise child, after the lemonade jug is empty, takes the lemons from the bottom of it and squeezes them into a still larger brew. So does the sagacious author, after having sold his material to the magazines and been paid for it, clap it into book-covers and give it another squeeze. But in the present case the author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen’s Annual, and all others who are in any way implicated in the making of this book.

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

McGill University,

Montreal. Oct. 1, 1915.

MOONBEAMS FROM THE LARGER LUNACY

I.—SPOOF. A Thousand-Guinea Novel. New! Fascinating! Perplexing!

CHAPTER I

Readers are requested to note that this novel has taken our special prize of a cheque for a thousand guineas. This alone guarantees for all intelligent readers a palpitating interest in every line of it. Among the thousands of MSS. which reached us—many of them coming in carts early in the morning, and moving in a dense phalanx, indistinguishable from the Covent Garden Market waggons; others pouring down our coal-chute during the working hours of the day; and others again being slipped surreptitiously into our letter-box by pale, timid girls, scarcely more than children, after nightfall (in fact many of them came in their night-gowns),—this manuscript alone was the sole one—in fact the only one—to receive the prize of a cheque of a thousand guineas. To other competitors we may have given, inadvertently perhaps, a bag of sovereigns or a string of pearls, but to this story alone is awarded the first prize by the unanimous decision of our judges.

When we say that the latter body included two members of the Cabinet, two Lords of the Admiralty, and two bishops, with power in case of dispute to send all the MSS. to the Czar of Russia, our readers will breathe a sigh of relief to learn that the decision was instant and unanimous. Each one of them, in reply to our telegram, answered immediately SPOOF.

This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction. It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to INTEREST the reader has long since been abandoned by all the best writers. They refuse to do it. The modern novel must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture, or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology. Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things. The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled, and yet so filled with information that rising itself is a difficulty.

We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the first chapter. But the portion here presented was praised by The Saturday Afternoon Review as giving one of the most graphic and at the same time realistic pictures of America ever written in fiction.

Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated on the deck—on one of the many decks (all connected by elevators)—of the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath declared) a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is nephew to the Duke of—, but of this fact no one on the ship, except the captain, the purser, the steward, and the passengers are, or is, aware.

In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy is travelling under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere. In order the better to hide the object of his journey, Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though our readers will be able at any moment to turn his name backwards) has given it to be understood that he is travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to see America. This naturally baffles all those in contact with him.

The girl at his side—but perhaps we may best let her speak for herself.

Somehow as they sat together on the deck of the great steamer in the afterglow of the sunken sun, listening to the throbbing of the propeller (a rare sound which neither of them of course had ever heard before), de Vere felt that he must speak to her. Something of the mystery of the girl fascinated him. What was she doing here alone with no one but her mother and her maid, on the bosom of the Atlantic? Why was she here? Why was she not somewhere else? The thing puzzled, perplexed him. It would not let him alone. It fastened upon his brain. Somehow he felt that if he tried to drive it away, it might nip him in the ankle.

In the end he spoke.

And you, too, he said, leaning over her deck-chair, are going to America?

He had suspected this ever since the boat left Liverpool. Now at length he framed his growing conviction into words.

Yes, she assented, and then timidly, it is 3,213 miles wide, is it not?

Yes, he said, and 1,781 miles deep! It reaches from the forty-ninth parallel to the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, cried the girl, what a vivid picture! I seem to see it.

Its major axis, he went on, his voice sinking almost to a caress, is formed by the Rocky Mountains, which are practically a prolongation of the Cordilleran Range. It is drained, he continued—

How splendid! said the girl.

Yes, is it not? It is drained by the Mississippi, by the St. Lawrence, and—dare I say it?—by the Upper Colorado.

Somehow his hand had found hers in the half gloaming, but she did not check him.

Go on, she said very simply; I think I ought to hear it.

The great central plain of the interior, he continued, is formed by a vast alluvial deposit carried down as silt by the Mississippi. East of this the range of the Alleghanies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet in height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which the watershed falls to the Atlantic.

He was speaking very quietly but earnestly. No man had ever spoken to her like this before.

What a wonderful picture! she murmured half to herself, half aloud, and half not aloud and half not to herself.

Through the whole of it, de Vere went on, there run railways, most of them from east to west, though a few run from west to east. The Pennsylvania system alone has twenty-one thousand miles of track.

Twenty-one thousand miles, she repeated; already she felt her will strangely subordinate to his.

He was holding her hand firmly clasped in his and looking into her face.

Dare I tell you, he whispered, how many employees it has?

Yes, she gasped, unable to resist.