Literary Lapses

Who but Stephen Leacock would endeavor to describe a boarding house -- in terms of schoolroom geometry? ("The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram -- that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.") Or to detail the terrible ordeal of Melpomenus Jones, unable to say, "Good-bye"?

Leacock (1869-1944) did have his serious side -- for he wrote learnedly of Twain and Dickens, and was a professor of political science and economics at McGill University . . . but it was when he set aside seriousness for levity, with such sketches as "How Tennyson Killed the May Queen" or "Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas," that he has won over the English-reading public everywhere.