DSC material a bird's view- Part-7

About the author :

Stephen Butler Leacock, (30 December 1869 – 28 March 1944) was an English-born Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist.

In the early part of the 20th century he was the best-known humorist in the English-speaking world.^[1]

In 1899 he began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he received a doctorate in political science and political economy.
 He moved from Chicago, Illinois to Montreal, Quebec, where he became a lecturer and long-time acting head of the political economy department at McGill University.
Leacock was both a social conservative and a partisan Conservative.
He opposed giving women the right to vote, disliked non-Anglo-Saxon immigration and supported the introduction of social welfare legislation.
 He was a staunch champion of the British Empire and went on lecture tours to further the cause.
Although he was considered as a candidate for Dominion elections by his party, it declined to invite the author, lecturer, and maverick to stand for election. Nevertheless, he would stump for local candidates at his summer home.
He died of throat cancer.
His published works :

Elements of Political Science (1906)

Practical Political Economy (1910)

Literary Lapses (1910)

includes "The New Food"

Nonsense Novels (1911)

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)

Behind the Beyond (1913)

Adventurers of the Far North (1914)

The Dawn of Canadian History (1914)

The Mariner of St. Malo (1914)

Essays and Literary Studies (1916)

Further Foolishness (1916)

Frenzied Fiction (1918)

Winsome Winnie (1920)

The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920)

My Discovery of England (1922)

College Days (1923)

Over the Footlights (1923)

The Garden of Folly (1924)

Winnowed Wisdom (1926)

Short Circuits (1928)

The Iron Man and the Tin Woman (1929)

Economic Prosperity in the British Empire (1930)

The Economic Prosperity of the British Empire (1931)

The Dry Pickwick (1932)

Afternoons in Utopia (1932)

Mark Twain (1932)

Charles Dickens: His Life and Work (1933)

Humour: Its Theory and Technique, with Examples and Samples (1935)

Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill (1936)

Funny Pieces (1936)

The Greatest Pages of American Humor (1936)

Humour and Humanity (1937)

My Discovery of the West (1937)

Model Memoirs (1938)

Too Much College (1939)

Our British Empire (1940)

Canada: The Foundations of Its Future (1941)

My Remarkable Uncle (1942)

Our Heritage of Liberty (1942)

Montreal: Seaport and City (1942)

Happy Stories (1943)

How to Write (1943)

Canada and the Sea (1944)

While There Is Time (1945)-Posthumously published

Last Leaves (1945)

The Boy I Left Behind Me (1946)- Posthumously published

Wet Wit and Dry Humor

Laugh with Leacock

Back to Prosperity

The Greatest Pages of Charles Dickens

Essays and Literary Studies

About the essay - point wise summary:

In the Essay How to live to be 200 Leacock pokes fun at health freakes who do absurd things to lead a long life.
The writer gives an example of a man whose name is called Jiggins.
Jiggins is a man who has much concern about health.  He would take so many absurd and meaningless measures to improve fitness.
He would take bath in cold and hot water simultaneously, he do breathing excursuses standing near a window.
He is crazy about doing various exercises by twisting the body into different shapes, he would lie down on his stomach and in the evening he would do weight lifting exercises with iron bars canon balls and dumbbells.
Still he dies at a very young age.
In their zeal to stay fit people like Jiggins do so much jogging they do walking on grass and follow stringent diet restrictions and finally they become health maniacs.
(Homoursly) It is trivial that those pole who do so much fitness practices dies of trivial ailments like normal people.
Author advises the reader to wake up leisurely and take hot water bath.
Humorous elements are:

a.       Poet argues that we can control the bacillus which is a form of bacteria by hitting it with an object

b.      He says that the bacillus can tamed and it can become a pet.

c.       Author humorously concocts a story where in a bacillus named Fido was overrun by car(Which is absolutely not possible)

d.      Author says Cholera is caused by abdominal pain and diphtheria by the attempt to cure sore throat (Which are false and laugh evoking statements).

e.       He advises to eat whatever can be eaten and he goes further in advising to swallow glue and cement which can become gluten.

f.       He advises even to sip nitrogen ( as it is a gas it is not possible to sip)

Author observes that exercises do not serve much purpose. We can sit in the shade and enjoy the gymnastics and baseball games while the player performing them for receive fresh air and enjoy the games and performances.
Important lines from the essay

1.      They go out in silly little suits and run marathon heats before breakfast.

2.      Now people of this sort have no chance to attain any great age. They are on the wrong track.

3.      But as long as you have the price of a hack and can hire other people to play baseball for you and run races and do gymnastics when you can sit in the shade and smoke and watch them-  great heavens, what more do you want.