Worth a re-read

Stephen Leacock.  Picked up 'Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich' yesterday.  Having read it many times, I never cease to relish in Leacock's genius.  One story, entitled 'The Arrested Philanthropy', features university characters called "President Boomer, Professors Dr. Boyster, Withers, Shottat, Gildas and Dean Elberberry Foible".  The law firm is called "Skinyer and Beatem" and the hotel "The Grand Palaver" -- all perfect names for the piece.

"At the least sign of restlessness they doused him with Latin," reads one passage, referring to how the president manipulated a potential financial donor into giving.  "At Plutoria, they now taught everything.  They had lectures on Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, with an optional course on atheism for students in the final year."  Nothing's changed.

"He was shown professors who could handle the first year, but were powerless with the second; others who were all right with the second, but broke down with the third, while others could handle the third, but collapsed with the fourth.  There were professors who were all right in their own subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; others who were so occupied outside of their own subject they were useless inside of it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't lecture; and others again who lectured admirably, but didn't know their subject."

A typical university of today entirely.

Leacock, born in Hampshire, England in 1869, emigrated with his family and settled in a farm north of Toronto -- probably a very built-up suburb now.  He was, however, not just a humourist.  The author of a number of books on economics, he chaired that department at McGill until his retirement in 1936.  From 1910 on, he published a volume of humour almost every year.  Unsurprisingly, his two favourite writers were Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and I'll bet Oscar Wilde was somewhere on that list. 

I plan to enjoy the other stories in this book, namely 'A Little Dinner With Mr. Lucullus Fyshe', 'The Wizard of Finance', 'The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown', 'The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins', 'The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. Osoph', 'The Ministrations of the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing' and 'The Great Fight for Clean Government'. 

The last I am sure will be as relevant today as when penned.