Frenzied Fiction

Frenzied Fiction, by Stephen Leacock

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Title: Frenzied Fiction
Author: Stephen Leacock
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8457] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRENZIED FICTION ***

This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.

Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock

CONTENTS
I. My Revelations as a Spy
II. Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy
III. The Prophet in Our Midst
IV. Personal Adventures in the Spirit World
V. The Sorrows of a Summer Guest
VI. To Nature and Back Again
VII. The Cave-Man as He Is
VIII. Ideal Interviews--
I. With a European Prince
II. With Our Greatest Actor
III. With Our Greatest Scientist
IV. With Our Typical Novelists
IX. The New Education
X. The Errors of Santa Claus
XI. Lost in New York
XII. This Strenuous Age
XIII. The Old, Old Story of How Five Men Went Fishing
XIV. Back from the Land
XV. The Perplexity Column as Done by the Jaded Journalist
XVI. Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life
XVII. In Dry Toronto
XVIII. Merry Christmas

I. My Revelations as a Spy
In many people the very name "Spy" excites a shudder of apprehension; we Spies, in fact, get quite used to being shuddered at. None of us Spies mind it at all. Whenever I enter a hotel and register myself as a Spy I am quite accustomed to see a thrill of fear run round the clerks, or clerk, behind the desk.
Us Spies or We Spies--for we call ourselves both--are thus a race apart. None know us. All fear us. Where do we live? Nowhere. Where are we? Everywhere. Frequently we don't know ourselves where we are. The secret orders that we receive come from so high up that it is often forbidden to us even to ask where we are. A friend of mine, or at least a Fellow Spy--us Spies have no friends --one of the most brilliant men in the Hungarian Secret Service, once spent a month in New York under the impression that he was in Winnipeg. If this happened to the most brilliant, think of the others.
All, I say, fear us. Because they know and have reason to know our power. Hence, in spite of the prejudice against us, we are able to move everywhere, to lodge in the best hotels, and enter any society that we wish to penetrate.
Let me relate an incident to illustrate this: a month ago I entered one of the largest of the New York hotels which I will merely call the B. hotel without naming it: to do so might blast it. We Spies, in fact, never name a hotel. At the most we indicate it by a number known only to ourselves, such as 1, 2, or 3.
On my presenting myself at the desk the clerk informed me that he had no room vacant. I knew this of course to be a mere subterfuge; whether or not he suspected that I was a Spy I cannot say. I was muffled up, to avoid recognition, in a long overcoat with the collar turned up and reaching well above my ears, while the black beard and the moustache, that I had slipped on in entering the hotel, concealed my face. "Let me speak a moment to the manager," I said. When he came I beckoned him aside and taking his ear in my hand I breathed two words into it. "Good heavens!" he gasped, while his face turned as pale as ashes. "Is it enough?" I asked. "Can I have a room, or must I breathe again?" "No, no," said the manager, still trembling. Then, turning to the clerk: "Give this gentleman a room," he said, "and give him a bath."
What these two words are that will get a room in New York at once I must not divulge. Even now, when the veil of secrecy is being lifted, the international interests involved are too complicated to permit it. Suffice