cartoonist recalls meeting famous US generals

Sherman montage / © Roy R. Behrens

Walt McDougall, This Is the Life! New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926—

I was born in 1858, in Newark, NJ, and about ten years later the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, took me in hand and, recognizing qualities not yet discernible by parents, teachers or companions, with one prophetic sentence planted in me a firm, enduring conviction that I was destined for great things, along with a deep-seated aversion for hard work. The exact date of this memorable event may be found by ascertaining just when President Grant drove the famous Dexter around the track at Waverley Fair Grounds, a couple of miles south of Newark.

I was there with about half the boy population, but every incident of the day is forgotten except this historic happening. Loitering back of the judge's stand, a circular structure, the vast crowd blocked my view except aloft to this bird-house wherein I knew the President and a number of notables were watching the races. An enclosed stairway led to the upper platform, supported by a three-inch post, and urged by Destiny and exuberant vitality, I amused myself by climbing up this support. Reaching the platform, I was, of course, checked by the paneled balustrade and slid down, but on a third or fourth attempt I looked up to find a bearded face looking down upon me with kindly amused eyes. A hand was extended to me and raising mine, I was drawn up and lifted over the balustrade.

"You'll get up in the world, my boy!" said the bearded man as he set me down. Every eye in the judge's stand was fixed upon me and I expected an instant expulsion, but a pleasant grin upon the handsome face of Patrick Quinn, the Secretary of the Waverley Association and a friend of my family, gave me some confidence. I stared eagerly about me but saw no face resembling the well-known one of General Grant. After a moment, Congressman Courtland Parker, also a family friend, asked me with a teasing smile: "Who are you looking for, son?"

"Why, I'm looking for General Grant!" I stammered. "I thought he was up here."

What he replied I cannot recall, but there was a general laugh following it, and in my embarrassment I turned about toward my introducer as a refuge. Instantly I recognized the familiar face, but wreathed in a broad smile. The shock was such that I bolted down the stairway, unlatched the door and fled. Before I reached home I was highly exultant, but when I told my story my mother was deeply mortified by such unseemly conduct and insisted that I write the President an apology. Poor mother, with six boys to guide, had none as erratic as I, and she feared that my little adventure would get into the paper, but, unfortunately, it didn't.

One day in '86 I went with James Kelly, the sculptor, to Grant's house in 65th Street to watch him make some sketches for a battle monument he was designing. I asked the General if he remembered driving Dexter at Waverley. He said that he had driven the horse several times but did not recall the name of the place in New Jersey, and he was highly amused when I related how he had uplifted me and given me a slogan to live up to.

•••

Somewhere about the same time as the Waverley incident a great Industrial Exposition, the first of its kind, I think, in our quiet city, was opened at the Washington Street Rink and General William Tecumseh Sherman was the main attraction. An immense throng attended that formed an endless line to shake hands with the hero of the March to the Sea. I remember well the gaunt yet handsome figure he made as he underwent this ordeal. I slipped into the slow-moving line and finally felt the tingling thrill of contact with that smooth but formidable sword-hand. The sensation was delicious, but, not content, I wormed myself into line again and took another electric shock. When I reached him for a third thrill, the General glared down upon me and said gruffly:

"You get out of here! I've shaken hands with you twice already!"

One evening years afterward when I had come to know him, as I shall relate in another place, I told of this incident at a big theatrical banquet. The General wrinkled his brow meditatively for a moment, then smiled and said:

"Why, I remember that little episode very well, but you've got it wrong. Didn't I kick you? Seems to me I did!"

"You did not, General, but I deserved it," I replied. "I suppose it irks you to discover that you neglected an opportunity?"

"Well! Well, I still think I did!" he insisted, grinning. "Anyway, I guess I knocked a lot of conceit out of you!"

I mean the thing you use to rub out mistakes

Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004

Bessie Head [South African novelist], "Some Happy Memories of Iowa" in Paul Engle, et al., editor, The World Comes to Iowa (Ames: State University of Iowa Press, 1987), pp. 86-87—

American English isn't the British English that is spoken in southern Africa. I walked into a stationery shop and said to the man behind the counter, "I would like to buy a rubber, please." The man said: "We don't sell them in ones. We sell them in threes." I said: "But I want only one rubber." The man became hostile: "But I told you we only sell them in threes." I said: "All right, I'll take three then." The man walked to the back of the shop and returned with a small packet of prophylactics that he handed to me. He had such a peculiar look in his eyes that I thought he believed I was a prostitute who had suddenly invaded Iowa City. Half fainting with shock I struggled to explain, "I mean the thing you rub mistakes out with." "Oh," he said, "you mean an eraser."

awaiting the shared use of a set of false teeth

Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004

Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (New York: Summit Books, 1991), p. 1.—

[My paternal grandfather] was a great teller of jokes, typically without preamble, to trap you into thinking you were hearing about some real event. One of these horrified me so much [as a child] that I have never forgotten it. A Scotsman (I was still so young that I had not heard about Scotsmen being supposed to be mean) took his wife out to dinner. Both order steak. The wife started eating hers at top speed, but the man left his untouched. "Something wrong with the steak, sir?"—" No, no, I'm waiting for my wife's teeth." I had not then heard of false teeth either, and imagined the living teeth being torn from the woman's jaws on the spot and inserted into her husband's.