The Charlie Chaplin Book by Robert Keene Thompson

Author:Robert Keene Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2016-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

By the Sea

CHARLIE CHAPLIN came down the board walk, eating a banana. The direction in which he was heading was north. And one of his feet, in their battered “number thirteens,” was pointed to the east while the other was aimed due west, so that as he walked straight ahead he had to propel himself entirely by his heels.

He took a bite of the banana. Then, forgetting that he had just done so, he took another bite. The result was a collision between both mouthfuls. One of them had to go. It did.

Charlie looked down at the yellow skin in his hand, to find that it was empty. His absent-mindedness had caused him to lose at least a third of the banana—the amount of his second mouthful, which he had not been able to manage, and that had rolled through a crack in the board walk at his feet out of sight.

His expression grew sad. He twirled his little bamboo cane, and turned his head to the right and then to the left. Then, dropping the banana skin on the walk, he started forward once more, and slipped on the peel and fell down.

His expression was sadder than ever when he picked himself up.

Advancing another hundred feet along the board walk, Charlie Chaplin stopped beside a man who was absorbed in watching his own feet. They were behaving in a strange way. If it had been ice, instead of a summer-resort board walk on which he stood, a beholder would have said that he was engaged in executing the fancy skater’s feat of “cutting the figure eight.”

The man had been drinking—something a great deal stronger than lemonade.

On the stiff wind that was blowing, Charlie got a whiff of alcohol from his direction. He clapped his hand to his brow, staggering. Then another gust of wind cleared his reeling senses, and he started to walk rapidly away from the convivial party’s dangerous proximity.

As he did so, the wind blew his derby off. It swept the tipsy individual’s straw hat from his head at the same moment. Both headpieces shot out at the end of the “trolleys” fastened in their owners’ buttonholes, and the two strings wound around each other.

“Excuse me!” said Charlie Chaplin, flashing his white teeth in an apologetic smile at the unsteady stranger, and pulling his derby out of the air to clap it back on his bushy hair.

“Scush me!” thickly echoed the “souse,” recovering his own hat and replacing it on his head likewise.

And then they both started off in opposite directions.

Their trolleys being still tangled, the hat of each was jerked off his head again as they moved apart.

Both swung around to face each other, tethered by the cords at their buttonholes like a pair of spaniels out for an airing on a double leash.

“Excuse me!” repeated Charlie Chaplin. And “Scush—hic—me!” said the pifflicated individual again.

They made a simultaneous grab for their hats once more, and each one got the other’s by mistake and put it on his head.

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