I usually find that Doris has read the Briggs page to Junior before I get downstairs, the Briggs page (and possibly the drawings of Voight’s Lester De Pester) being the only department that an adult mind can dwell on and keep its self-respect.  “Now I will read you Briggs,” says Doris with the air of an indulgent parent, but settling down with great relish to the task, “and Daddy will read you the others.”

Having been stuck for over a year with “the others” I have now reached a stage where I utilize a sort of second sight in the reading whereby the words are seen and pronounced without ever registering on my brain at all.  And, as I sit with Junior impassive on my lap (just why children should so frantically seek to have the “funnies” read to them is a mystery, for they never by any chance seem to derive the slightest emotional pleasure from the recital but sit in stony silence as if they rather disapproved of the whole thing after all) I have evolved a system which enables me to carry on a little constructive thinking while reading aloud, thereby keeping the time from being entirely wasted.  Heaven knows we get little enough opportunity to sit down and think things out in this busy work-a-day world, so that this little period of mental freedom is in the nature of a godsend.  Thus: 

    What Is Being Read Aloud

“Here he says ‘Gee but this is tough luck a new automobile an’ no place to go’ and the dog is saying ‘It ain’t so tough at that’.  Then here in the next picture the old man says:  Percy ain’t in my class as a chauffeur, he ain’t as fearless as me’ and this one is saying ’Hello there, that looks like the old tin Lizzie that I gave to the General last year I guess I’ll take a peek and see what’s up’ ’Well what are you doing hanging around here, what do you think this is a hotel?’ ’Say where do you get that stuff you ain’t no justice of the peace you know’ ’Wow!  Let me out let me out, I say’ ‘I’ll show you biff biff wham zowie!’ etc. etc.”

    Concurrent Thinking

“Here I am in the thirties and it is high time that I made something of myself.  Is my job as good as I deserve?  By studying nights I might fit myself for a better position in the foreign exchange department, but that would mean an outlay of money.  Furthermore, is it, on the whole, wise to attempt to hurry the workings of Fate?  Is not perhaps the determinist right who says that what we are and what we ever can be is already written in the books, that we can not alter the workings of Destiny one iota?  This theory is, of course, tenable, but, on the whole, it seems to me that if I were to take the matter into my own hands, etc. etc.”

And then, when the last pot of boiling water has been upset over the last grandfather’s back, and Junior has slid down from your lap as near satisfied as he ever will be, you have ten or fifteen minutes of constructive thinking behind you, which, if practiced every Sunday, will make you President of the company within a few years.