The Shaggy Dog Stories

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 82, 17 January 1941, Page 5

The Shaggy Dog Stories

| AM going to tell you a story. This is the story: " A New Yorker who had picked up a big white shaggy stray dog saw an advertisement in a New York paper offering a £500 reward for an animal answering such a description, if returned to an address in Bayswater, in London. He immediately took ship to England with the dog, and. in due course called at the Bayswater address and rang the bell. _"You advertised in New York about a lost dog," p> he said to the man who opened the door, "a shaggy dog." "Oh," said the man coldly, "Not so darned shaggy," and slammed the door in the New Yorker’s face. That is the end of the tale, believe it or not. And smile at it or don’t as you prefer. The point about this story is that it gives. the title to a whole series or epidemic of anecdotes of a like nature, which have had a considerable vogue in the United States-the Shaggy Dog stories. For their careful collection into handy reference form we have to thank the Editors of the American magazine, Esquire, and the editor in chief of that publication, who has now assembled from its pages a highly attractive antho-. logy of articles, short stories and various essays "and commentaries, under the title "The Bedside Esquire."

"Shaggy Dog Stories," explains the writer of the article on them in this book, "are called that. because there is no other description that defines them any better." Their value is, he explains, highly ‘esoteric, but if one specialises one may come to recognise them. Since all knowledge is the field of the intelligent reader-and, of course, the intelligent listener-to-day, I propose to provide you with one or two specimens, which will enable you to know a shaggy dog next time you meet one. Here is a comparatively simple fellow: When General Tom Thumb, the famous midget in Barnum’s fabulous circus, was appearing in an American ‘middle western town the local newspaper sent a reporter to interview him. The reporter knocked at the hetel door, and it was opened by a towering giant of a man, who filled the doorway from threshhold ta lintel and from jamb to jamb. "I want to interview General Thumb," the newspaperman said. "Glad to see you," the giant replied. "I’m General Tom Thumb." "Why," said the reporter, peering up at the man, "you're crazy-Tom Thumb is a little wee guy." "Well," the giant replied, " This is my day off." If you can see anything funny in that the Shaggy Dog has bitten you.-(Book Talk, by John Moftatt, 4YA, December 18.)