Ladies and GentlemenCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
Ladies and Gentlemen
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories, American
"Made it up. It's a good word and it's mine and I like it. And don't
interrupt. As I was saying, we all deplore the mercenaryism and the
materialism and the senseless display that's crept into Christmas, and
a lot of people spout about it just as you're doing, but nobody does
anything to try to reform it. At least nobody has since they started
the custom of sending Christmas cards instead of gifts. But that was a
mistake; it's been overdone into an evil. There's a passion to see who
can buy the most expensive cards; and you spend weeks beforehand making
up the lists and addressing the envelops, and the cards cost as much
as the presents used to cost and make ever so much more bother getting
them out. Look at what happened to us last Christmas! Look at what's
sure to happen this Christmas! And all you do is stand there--sit
there, I mean--and spout at me as though I were to blame. Suggest a way
out, why don't you? I'd be only too delighted if you would."
"I will," proclaimed the challenged party. He thought hard. "We'll run
away from it--that's what we'll do."
"Where do we run?"
"That's a mere detail. I'm working out the main project. In advance
we'll circulate the word that we're escaping from the civilized brand
of Christmas; that on December twenty-fifth we're going to be far,
far beyond the reach of long-distance telephones, telegraph lines,
wireless, radio, mental telepathy, rural free delivery routes, janitors
with their paws out for ten-dollar bills and other well-wishers; that
we're not going to send any presents to our well-to-do friends and are
not expecting any from them; that we're not even figuring on mailing
out a single, solitary, dad-busted greetings card. There's plenty of
time ahead of us for putting the campaign through. We'll remember
our immediate relatives and your pet charities and any worth-while
dependents we can think of. And then we'll just dust out and forget to
leave any forwarding address."
"We could try Florida again," suggested Mrs. Bugbee.
"The land of the sap and the sapodilla--we will not! What's Florida now
except New York with a pair of white duck pants on?"
"Well, the climate there is--"
"It is not! It's all cluttered up with real-estate agents, the climate
is. Besides I never could see the advantages of traveling eighteen
hundred miles in mid-winter to get into the same kind of weather that
you travel eighteen hundred miles in midsummer to get out of."
"Well, then, we might run up to Lake Placid or the Berkshires. Of
course it'll be too early at either place for the regular season, but I
suppose there'll be a few people we know--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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