---
title: A Sad Post
description: >
Something sad happened.
created: !!timestamp '2010-12-01 10:00:00'
tags:
- sad
- thoughts
---
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I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was when I
tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a dinner-jacket. I
sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time than because I wanted it.
It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill of fare with poor old Bicky headed
for the breadline.
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When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there, hunched up
in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette hanging out of the
corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare in his eyes. He had the
aspect of one who had been soaked with what the newspaper chappies call "some
blunt instrument."
"This is a bit thick, old thing—what!" I said.
He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact that it
hadn't anything in it.
"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money was due
to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been reading about
in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can make a dashed amount of
money if you can only collect a few dollars and start a chicken-farm. Jolly
sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a hen—call it one hen for the sake of
argument. It lays an egg every day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for
twenty-five cents. Keep of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five
cents on every seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen
eggs. Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep in hens,
all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd make a fortune.
Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get quite worked up at the
thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair at this juncture with a good
deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no good," he said, "because I haven't the
cash."
"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend money to
won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it to will do
everything except actually stand you on your head and lift the specie out of
your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled tolerably free in the right
stuff, I've had lots of experience of the second class. Many's the time, back
in London, I've hurried along Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the
toucher on the back of my neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he
closed in on me. I've simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I
didn't care a hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of
eight and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
uppers, not taking any at any price.
"Well, there's only one hope, then."
"What's that?"
"Jeeves."
"Sir?"
There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting in the
old armchair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up, and
there he is. He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly
fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably. He rose from his seat
like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves now, but often in the days when
he first came to me I've bitten my tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly
in my midst.
[My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse][MMJ]
[MMJ]: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8164/pg8164.html