MRS R. L. S. GRISWOLD
A. I cannot try the patience of my public nor waste my own time dealing with the problems of insensate animals. Already I have gone perhaps too far afield in the case of stuffed birds and cast-iron lawn dogs. Pretty soon I should be giving advice on wirehaired fox terrier weather-vanes.
Q. Mr Jennings bought this beast when it was a pup in Montreal for a St Bernard, but I don’t think it is. It’s grown enormously and is stubborn about letting you have anything, like the bath towel it has its paws on, and the hat, both of which belong to Mr Jennings. He got it that bowling ball to play with but it doesn’t seem to like it. Mr Jennings is greatly attached to the creature.
MRS FANNY EDWARDS JENNINGS
A. What you have is a bear. While it isn’t my bear, I should recommend that you dispose of it. As these animals grow older they get more and more adamant about letting you have anything, until finally there might not be anything in the house you could call your own – except possibly the bowling ball. Zoos use bears. Mr Jennings could visit it.
Q. Sometimes my dog does not seem to know me. I think he must be crazy. He will draw away, or show his fangs, when I approach him.
H. M. MORGAN, JR
A. So would I, and I’m not crazy. If you creep up on your dog the way you indicate in the drawing, I can understand his viewpoint. Put your shirt in and straighten up; you look as if you had never seen a dog before, and that is undoubtedly what bothers the animal. These maladjustments can often be worked out by the use of a little common sense.
Q. After a severe storm we found this old male raven in the study of my father, the Hon. George Morton Bodwell, for many years head of the Latin Department at Tufts, sitting on a bust of Livy which was a gift to him from the class of ’92. All that the old bird will say is ‘Grawk’. Can ravens be taught to talk or was Poe merely ‘romancing’?
MRS H. BODWELL COLWETHER
A. I am handicapped by an uncertainty as to who says ‘Grawk’, the raven or your father. It just happens that ‘Arrk’ is what ravens say. I have never known a raven that said anything but ‘Arrk’.
Q. I have three Scotch terriers which take things out of closets and down from shelves, etc. My veterinarian advised me to gather together all the wreckage, set them down in the midst of it, and say ‘ba-ad Scotties!’ This, however, merely seems to give them a kind of pleasure. If I spank one, the other two jump me – playfully, but they jump me.
MRS O. S. PROCTOR
A. To begin with, I question the advisability of having three Scotch terriers. They are bound to get you down. However, it seems to me that you are needlessly complicating your own problem. The Scotties probably think that you are trying to enter into the spirit of their play. Their inability to comprehend what you are trying to get at will in the end make them melancholy, and you and the dogs will begin to drift farther and farther apart. I’d deal with each terrier, and each object, separately, beginning with the telephone, the disconnexion of which must inconvenience you sorely.
Q. My husband paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars for this moose to a man in Dorset, Ontario, who said he had trapped it in the woods. Something is wrong with his antlers, for we have to keep twisting them back into place all the time. They’re loose.
MRS OLIPHANT BEATTY
A. You people are living in a fool’s paradise. The animal is obviously a horse with a span of antlers strapped on to his head. If you really want a moose, dispose of the horse; if you want to keep the horse, take the antlers off. Their constant pressure on his ears isn’t a good idea.
8
FROM THE SEAL IN THE BEDROOM
‘With You I Have Known Peace, Lida, and Now You Say You’re Going Crazy’
‘Are You the Young Man That Bit My Daughter?’
‘Here’s a Study for You, Doctor – He Faints’
‘Mamma Always Gets Sore and Spoils the Game for Everybody’
‘For the Last Time – You and Your Horsie Get Away from Me and Stay Away!’
‘Well, What’s Come Over You Suddenly?’
‘Have You People Got Any ·38 Cartridges?’
‘The Father Belonged to Some People Who Were Driving Through in a Packard’
‘Stop Me!’
‘I Don’t Know. George Got It Somewhere’
‘All Right, Have It Your Way – You Heard a Seal Bark’
The Bloodhound and the Bug
9
FROM MEN, WOMEN AND DOGS
‘This Is Not the Real Me You’re Seeing, Mrs Clisbie’
‘What’s Come Over You Since Friday, Miss Schemke?’
‘Hello, Darling – Woolgathering?’
‘It’s a Naïve Domestic Burgundy Without Any Breeding. But I Think You’ll be Amused by its Presumption’
‘Oh, Doctor Conroy – Look!’
‘I’d Feel a Great Deal Easier if Her Husband Hadn’t Gone to Bed’
‘Touché!’
‘And This Is Tom Weatherby, an old Beau of Your Mother’s. He Never Got to First Base!
‘Perhaps This Will Refresh Your Memory’
‘… And Keep Me a Normal, Healthy Girl’
‘It’s Parkins, Sir; We’re ’Aving a Bit of a Time Below Stairs’
‘Darling, I Seem to Have This Rabbit’
‘That’s My First Wife Up There, and This Is the Present Mrs Harris’
‘You’re Not My Patient, You’re My Meat, Mrs Quist!’
‘She Has the True Emily Dickinson Spirit Except That She Gets Fed Up Occasionally’
‘I Said the Hounds of Spring Are on Winter’s Traces – But Let it Pass, Let it Pass!’
‘For Heaven’s Sake, Why Don’t You go Outdoors and Trace Something?’
‘I Don’t Want Him to Be Comfortable if He’s Going to Look Too Funny’
‘Yoo-hoo, It’s Me and the Ape Man’
‘Look Out! Here They Come Again!’
‘You Wait Here and I’ll Bring the Etchings Down’
‘Well, Who Made the Magic Go Out of Our Marriage – You or Me?’
House and Woman
‘Well, if I Called the Wrong Number, Why Did You Answer the Phone?’
‘This Gentleman Was Kind Enough to See Me Home, Darling’
‘I Come From Haunts of Coot and Hern!’
‘Well, I’m Disenchanted, Too. We’re All Disenchanted’
‘What Do You Want to Be Inscrutable For, Marcia?’
‘You Said a Moment Ago That Everybody You Look at Seems to Be a Rabbit. Now Just What Do You Mean by That, Mrs Sprague?’
‘Why, I Never Dreamed Your Union Had Been Blessed With Issue!’
‘Have You Seen My Pistol, Honey-Bun?’
‘It’s Our Own Story Exactly! He Bold as a Hawk, She Soft as the Dawn’
‘You and Your Premonitions!’
‘All Right, All Right, Try it That Way! Go Ahead and Try it That Way!’
‘Well, it Makes a Difference to Me!’
‘There’s no Use You Trying to Save Me, My Good Man’
Man in Tree
‘What Have You Done with Dr Millmoss?’
The War Between Men and Women
I. The Overt Act
II. The Battle on the Stairs
III. The Fight in the Grocery
IV. Men’s G.H.Q.
V. Women’s G.H.Q.
VI. Capture of Three Physics Professors
VII. Surrender of Three Blondes
VIII. The Battle of Labrador
IX. The Spy
X. Mrs Pritchard’s Leap
XI. Zero Hour – Connecticut
XII. The Sniper
XIII. Parley
XIV. Gettysburg
XV. Retreat
XVI. Rout
XVII. Surrender
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 1945
Published under the title The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Other Pieces in Penguin Classics 2000
This edition published 2014
Copyright 1945 by James Thurber
Cover illustration © James Thurber, courtesy of the Thurber Estate
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-39598-2
* This sometimes happens even when the husband is mentally disciplined and the wife is not.
* From A Shropshire Lad, by A. E. Housman, by permission of Jonathan Cape, Ltd.
The Thurber Carnival Page 29
