458
ftARTISAN REVIEW
"They can't hear me, they're deaf and dumb," Toby said to
Father. "How could they hear if they're deaf and dumb?"
Father said: "The people who run the Deaf and Dumb Academy
can hear you yelling and bellowing." Father smiled but he was angry.
"But they're not deaf and dumb, so why should they mind?"
Toby said to Father.
"What a logical monster we have spawned!" Father said, turn–
ing towards Mother. Then he said, "Just don't yell, Toby, if you
don't mind," and then he said to Mother, "I suppose he'll grow up
to be a shyster lawyer."
Mother did not like that. She said to Father, that he was being
mean to Toby so Father said to Toby in a nice voice, that there was
a proverb, a very old saying, that anyone who was wholly clever was
half a fool. Just before they came to the theater Toby asked Mother
what was logical and Mother told him that being logical was like
arithmetic and that he was being logical when he said that being deaf
and dumb was something which would not make the doctors and
nurses in the Deaf and Dumb Academy mad when he shouted out
the way he had just shouted out.
It
was logical that they should not
be mad but that was not the way people's feelings worked. They
became mad whether they had any logical right to become mad or
not. Father said, "Your mother is right. Being logical is also being
someone who loves to argue
all
the time." So Toby said, "You and
Mother argue all the time, don't you?" So Father said, "You see
what a logician he is! What a logical rascal!" Then he said to Toby,
"The reason most people are logical is because they get mad and
are trying to hurt somebody's feelings. Now no more discussion of
the topic for several days to come."
He still did not know what logical was but from the way Father
said it, it was not a very nice thing to be and he did not like it when
Mother and Father would argue even though they did so behind
closed doors most of the time.
Bedford Avenue was the next stop. Toby got up and got out
of the train when it stopped and walked up the steps and looked for
the taxi he had been told to take to get to Martha's house. The taxi–
driver asked him if he had the money and Toby showed him the
dollar Father had given him. Then he got into the taxi and the taxi
was soon going down the big street where the streetcar ran. Another
