Filboid Studge, The Story of the Mouse that Helped

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　"I want to marry your daughter," said Mark Spayley with falteringeagerness. "I am only an artist with an income of two hundred ayear, and she is the daughter of an enormously wealthy man, so Isuppose you will think my offer a piece of presumption."Duncan Dullamy, the great company inflator, showed no outward signof displeasure. As a matter of fact, he was secretly relieved atthe prospect of finding even a two-hundred-a-year husband for hisdaughter Leonore. A crisis was rapidly rushing upon him, fromwhich he knew he would emerge with neither money nor credit; allhis recent ventures had fallen flat, and flattest of all had gonethe wonderful new breakfast food, Pipenta, on the advertisement ofwhich he had sunk such huge sums. It could scarcely be called adrug in the market; people bought drugs, but no one boughtPipenta."Would you marry Leonore if she were a poor man's daughter?" askedthe man of phantom wealth."Yes," said Mark, wisely avoiding the error of over-protestation.And to his astonishment Leonore's father not only gave hisconsent, but suggested a fairly early date for the wedding."I wish I could show my gratitude in some way," said Mark withgenuine emotion. "I'm afraid it's rather like the mouse proposingto help the lion.""Get people to buy that beastly muck," said Dullamy, noddingsavagely at a poster of the despised Pipenta, "and you'll havedone more than any of my agents have been able to accomplish.""It wants a better name," said Mark reflectively, "and somethingdistinctive in the poster line. Anyway, I'll have a shot at it."Three weeks later the world was advised of the coming of a newbreakfast food, heralded under the resounding name of "FilboidStudge." Spayley put forth no pictures of massive babiesspringing up with fungus-like rapidity under its forcinginfluence, or of representatives of the leading nations of theworld scrambling with fatuous eagerness for its possession. Onehuge sombre poster depicted the Damned in Hell suffering a newtorment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge whichelegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond theirreach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtlesuggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day inthe portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of bothpolitical parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authorsand novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were dimlyrecognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno, smilingstill from force of habit, but with the fearsome smiling rage ofbaffled effort. The poster bore no fulsome allusions to themerits of the new breakfast food, but a single grim statement ranin bold letters along its base: "They cannot buy it now."Spayley had grasped, the fact that people will do things from asense of duty which they would never attempt as a pleasure. Thereare thousands of respectable middle-class men who, if you foundthem unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, would explain in allsincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths; ifyou told them in return that you went there because you liked it,they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive.In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported fromAsia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "underorders " from somewhere or another, no one seems to think thatthere are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours now andthen.And so it was with the new breakfast food. No one would haveeaten Filboid Studge as a pleasure, but the grim austerity of itsadvertisement drove housewives in shoals to the grocers' shops toclamour for an immediate supply. In small kitchens solemn pig-tailed daughters helped depressed mothers to perform the primitiveritual of its preparation. On the breakfast-tables of cheerlessparlours it was partaken of in silence. Once the womenfolkdiscovered that it was thoroughly unpalatable, their zeal inforcing it on their households knew no bounds. "You haven't eatenyour Filboid Studge!" would be screamed at the appetiteless clerkas he hurried weariedly from the breakfast-table, and his eveningmeal would be prefaced by a warmed-up mess which would beexplained as "your Filboid Studge that you didn't eat thismorning." Those strange fanatics who ostentatiously mortifythemselves, inwardly and outwardly, with health biscuits andhealth garments, battened aggressively on the new food. Earnestspectacled young then devoured it on the steps of the NationalLiberal Club. A bishop who did not believe in a future statepreached against the poster, and a peer's daughter died fromeating too much of the compound. A further advertisement wasobtained when an infantry regiment mutinied and shot its officersrather than eat the nauseous mess; fortunately, Lord Birrell ofBlatherstone, who was War Minister at the moment, saved thesituation by his happy epigram, that "Discipline to be effectivemust be optional."Filboid Studge had become a household word, but Dullamy wiselyrealized that it was not necessarily the last word in breakfastdietary; its supremacy would be challenged as soon as some yetmore unpalatable food should be put on the market. There mighteven be a reaction in favour of something tasty and appetizing,and the Puritan austerity of the moment might be banished fromdomestic cookery. At an opportune moment, therefore, he sold outhis interests in the article which had brought him in colossalwealth at a critical juncture, and placed his financial reputationbeyond the reach of cavil. As for Leonore, who was now an heiresson a far greater scale than ever before, he naturally found hersomething a vast deal higher in the husband market than a two-hundred-a-year poster designer. Mark Spayley, the brainmouse whohad helped the financial lion with such untoward effect, was leftto curse the day he produced the wonder-working poster."After all," said Clovis, meeting him shortly afterwards at hisclub, "you have this doubtful consolation, that 'tis not inmortals to countermand success."