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Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
by Stephen Leacock [1915]
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I've included this book as it has a little history to it. A friend alerted me to it when an Australian political leader referred without any context to its title, and she tracked it down and located it on Gutenberg.
It's not a recently released book but is so whimsically humorous and has such a wonderful title that I can't resist mentioning it here, and including an excerpt.
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.
"A hundred and fourteen thousand," he said.
There was silence. They were both thinking. Presently she spoke, timidly.
"Are there any cities there?"
"Cities!" he said enthusiastically, "ah, yes! let me try to give you a word-picture of them. Vast cities – with tall buildings, reaching to the very sky. Why, for instance, the new Woolworth Building in New York – "
"Yes, yes," she broke in quickly, "how high is it?"
"Seven hundred and fifty feet."
The girl turned and faced him.
"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it. Some other time, perhaps, but not now."
She had risen and was gathering up her wraps. "And you," she said, "why are you going to America?"
"Why?" he answered. "Because I want to see, to know, to learn. And when I have learned and seen and known, I want other people to see and to learn and to know. I want to write it all down, all the vast palpitating picture of it. Ah! if I only could – I want to see" (and here he passed his hand through his hair as if trying to remember) "something of the relations of labour and capital, of the extraordinary development of industrial machinery, of the new and intricate organisation of corporation finance, and in particular I want to try to analyse – no one has ever done it yet – the men who guide and drive it all. I want to set down the psychology of the multimillionaire!"
He paused. The girl stood irresolute. She was thinking (apparently, for if not, why stand there?).
"Perhaps," she faltered, "I could help you."
"You!"
"Yes, I might." She hesitated. "I – I – come from America."
"You!" said de Vere in astonishment. "With a face and voice like yours! It is impossible!"
The boldness of the compliment held her speechless for a moment.
"I do," she said; "my people lived just outside of Cohoes."
"They couldn't have," he said passionately.
"I shouldn't speak to you like this," the girl went on, "but it's because I feel from what you have said that you know and love America. And I think I can help you."
"You mean," he said, divining her idea, "that you can help me to meet a multimillionaire?"
"Yes," she answered, still hesitating.
"You know one?"
"Yes," still hesitating, "I know ONE."
She seemed about to say more, her lips had already opened, when suddenly the dull raucous blast of the foghorn (they used a raucous one on this ship on purpose) cut the night air. Wet fog rolled in about them, wetting everything.
The girl shivered.
"I must go," she said; "good night."
For a moment de Vere was about to detain her. The wild thought leaped to his mind to ask her her name or at least her mother's. With a powerful effort he checked himself.
"Good night," he said.
She was gone.
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