Their talk had drifted back to their early days and how each
had made his start in life when he first struck New York. “I tell you what,
Jones,” one of them was saying, “I shall never forget my first few years in
this town. By George, it was pretty uphill work! Do you know, sir, when I first
struck this place, I hadn’t more than fifteen cents to my name, hadn’t a rag
except what I stood up in, and all the place I had to sleep in — you won’t
believe it, but it’s a gospel fact just the same — was an empty tar barrel.”
“My dear Robinson,” the other man rejoined briskly, “if you
imagine I’ve had no experience of hardship of that sort, you never made a
bigger mistake in your life. Why, when I first walked into this town I hadn’t a
cent, sir, not a cent, and as for lodging, all the place I had for months and
months was an old piano box up a lane, behind a factory. Talk about hardship, I
guess I had it pretty rough! You take a fellow that’s used to a good warm tar
barrel and put him into a piano box for a night or two, and you’ll see mighty
soon—”
Stephen Leacock - Literary Lapses (1910)
5 comments:
Well found! I suspect this is another case where the original passes into common memory, to emerge polished and worked up by the people who get all the credit. Or, more likely, that these things start from lots of different but similar sources, gradually building to create a sort of archetype that people can use in different ways. In both cases, I suspect that presentation and luck have more relevance than the "originality".
Sam - there is another aspect to this. I watched the sketch when Google recommended it although I'd seen it before. A little while later I read Literary Lapses after Amazon had recommended Leacock on my Kindle. I wouldn't be astounded if others have made the same connection via a similar route.
I'm sure you are right in that these things gradually build up to create a sort of archetype. Now we have internet giants actively promoting links it may be happening much more quickly with unpredictable but possibly profound consequences.
Marvellous, Mr H, and well discovered!
I still think that the punchline in the Python - and others of course - is one of the very best ever written!
(Sorry, I meant 'version' after 'of course', as Marty Feldman was superb back then, and must have been a major contributor to the sketch in .The 1948 Show.)!
Scrobs - aye but in our day we 'ad to do our own sketches outside in't freezing cold and rain wi' only a teaspoon o' drippin ter keep us goin.
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