Notes

1] Leacock says the following about Malthus in his preface:

The theory of Malthus was triumphant for a hundred years. It was regarded as a melancholy truth, but as none the less true. The great American economist, Francis Walker, spoke of argument directed at it as being only the `headless arrows of beginners.' But from the first I shot my headless arrows at it, unheeded. All that is true about the Malthus stuff is that if people multiply fast enough and long enough presently there won't be standing room. But it is no explanation of the industrial poverty, the starvation and the slum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The great collapse of the last five years has proved this to everybody. Poverty, unemployment and disaster have overwhelmed alike the city and the solitude: the world is starving in the midst of plenty: numbers have nothing to do with it. There is no population problem for humanity at large: only for the single family, that cannot place its offspring: and that problem belongs not under `numbers-and-subsistence,' but under socialorganization.

In regard to Malthus himself, I have permitted myself, in the interests of art, to clothe him with an imaginary character and appearance to suit his doctrine. It is true that Malthus, who was an ordained clergyman but lectured for the East India Company at their college at Haileybury, had a hare lip and was more or less unintelligible to his hearers. This, however, is hardly a disadvantage for a professor of political economy. But there is no reason to imagine that the reverend gentleman was cadaverous or doleful, or averse to the joys of matrimony. He married at twenty-nine and had a nurseryful of children. But Art is higher than literal truth. (vi-vii)

14] Malthus wrote: "Population ... increases in a geometrical ratio, subsistence in an arithmetical ratio" (Population i.i.14 [1798]; as quoted by OED). In an arithmetical ratio, increase occurs by a constant, e.g., 2, 4, 6, 8 ..., but the comparable geometic ratio increase would be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 ...

28] Political economy then held that the price of goods fluctuated according to the available supply and the rate of demand. If this demand remained steady, and if competition existed, supply would catch up to demand and the cost of goods would stabilize.

45] cloven Lip: hare-lip.

50] Choker: white neckerchief or colar worn by the clergy.
Shovel Hat: a broad-rimmed, stiff hat with a shovelled curve in front and back, worn by clergymen.

76] Quintuplets: Oliva and Elzire Dionne had quintuplets on May 28, 1934, at Corbeil, Ontario. The Ontario government took the five, Annette, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, and Marie, away from the parents and placed them in a special hospital, where they became a multi-million-dollar tourist attraction. Unfortunately, these sisters did not do well from all this attention. See Pierre Burton, The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama (Toronto: Seal, 1978; CT 9998 .D5B47).

79] Wordsworth: William Wordsworth, poet laureate (1770-1850), and his poem "We are Seven."

98] Ontology: the study of being.

107] four years ago: Leacock's preface is dated April Fool's Day, 1936. In 1932 all four western provinces were in effect bankrupt and the federal government established unemployment relief camps.

109] the Slump: now called the Great Depression.

118] Shade: ghost.

184] "and so forth and so on" (a French expression: see the OED, which lists examples 1904-29).

214] Clutch: the gear-changing pedal in a car.

220] Potomac: river running through Washington, D.C. The event to which Leacock alludes has not been found.

221] on the Dole: lining up for rations in public, on welfare.

235] Neolithic: Stone-Age.

251] Rutherford: Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), British physicist.
Soddy: Frederick Soddy (1877-1956), British chemist.

268] flying reptiles that were extinct long before man was around to hunt them.

290] chuck a Brace: throw away your crutch (?).

293] Year of Waterloo: 1815.

295] Hessian Boot: German boot extending almost to the knee.

299] Euthalameon: from Latin "euthalos," `laurel'?

328] Paresis: an incomplete paralysis of the insane.

333] Pop-stop: stop to fathering (being a "pop")? or poppycock (silliness)?

334] ergo: therefore.
drop-stop: an end to the Slump?

Other poems by Stephen Leacock