English fiction -- 20th century; Humorous stories, English; Short stories, English
"I'm not going under a jam-pot for anybody," I murmured.
However, it turned out that this trick was quite different. You
place a book (Macaulay's Essays or what not) on the jam-pot and sit
on the book, one heel only touching the ground. In the right hand
you have a box of matches, in the left a candle. The jam-pot, of
course, is on its side, so that it can roll beneath you. Then you
light the candle ... and hand it to anybody who wants to go to bed.
I was ready to give way to the ladies here, but even while I was
bowing and saying, "Not at all," I found myself on one of the
jam-pots with Bob next to me on another. To balance with the arms
outstretched was not so difficult; but as the matches were then
about six feet from the candle and there seemed no way of getting
them nearer together the solution of the problem was as remote as
ever. Three times I brought my hands together, and three times the
jam-pot left me.
"Well played, Bob," said somebody. The bounder had done it.
I looked at his jam-pot.
"There you are," I said, "'Raspberry--1909.' Mine's
'Gooseberry-1911,' a rotten vintage. And look at my book, Alone on
the Prairie; and you've got The Mormon's Wedding. No wonder I
couldn't do it."
I refused to try it again as I didn't think I was being treated
fairly; and after Bob and Miss Power had had a race at it, which Bob
won, we got on to something else.
"Of course you can pick a pin out of a chair with your teeth?" said
Miss Power.
"Not properly," I said. "I always swallow the pin."
"I suppose it doesn't count if you swallow the pin," said Miss Power
thoughtfully.
"I don't know. I've never really thought about that side of it much.
Anyhow, unless you've got a whole lot of pins you don't want, don't
ask me to do it to-night."
Accordingly we passed on to the water-trick. I refused at this, but
Miss Power went full length on the floor with a glass of water
balanced on her fore-head and came up again without spilling a
single drop. Personally, I shouldn't have minded spilling a single
drop; it was the thought of spilling the whole glass that kept me
back. Anyway, it is a useless trick, the need for which never arises
in an ordinary career. Picking up The Times with the teeth, while
clasping the left ankle with the right hand, is another matter. That
might come in useful on occasions; as, for instance, if having lost
your left arm on the field and having to staunch with the right hand
the flow of blood from a bullet wound in the opposite ankle, you
desired to glance through the Financial Supplement while waiting for
the ambulance.
"Here's a nice little trick," broke in Bob, as I was preparing
myself in this way for the German invasion.
He had put two chairs together, front to front, and was standing
over them--a foot on the floor on each side of them, if that conveys
it to you. Then he jumped up, turned round in the air, and came down
facing the other way.
"Can YOU do it?" I said to Miss Power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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