"The Unrest-Cure"

The academic year is always hectic, but we at nHumanities are just plain exhausted. Fall Finals ended on December 23, the grades were due January 2, meetings for the Spring semester started January 9, and classes began January 11--an inhumane holiday schedule if ever one was devised.

Consequently, we just read Saki's short story "The Unrest-Cure" with delight. Saki is the pen name of H. H. Munro (1870-1916), a Scot who wrote satires about Edwardian society that are reminiscent of Dorothy Parker and O. Henry.

In "The Unrest-Cure," Saki's recurring character Clovis overhears the middle-aged, complacent Rev. Mr. Huddle complaining to a friend:

"I don't know how it is," he told his friend, "I'm not much over forty, but I seem to have settled down into a deep groove of elderly middle-age. My sister shows the same tendency. We like everything to be exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly, punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute. It distresses and upsets us if it is not so. For instance, to take a very trifling matter, a thrush has built its nest year after year in the catkin-tree on the lawn; this year, for no obvious reason, it is building in the ivy on the garden wall. We have said very little about it, but I think we both feel that the change is unnecessary, and just a little irritating."

"Perhaps," said the friend, "it is a different thrush."

"We have suspected that," said J. P. Huddle, "and I think it gives us even more cause for annoyance. We don't feel that we want a change of thrush at our time of life . . .."

The friend recommends an "unrest-cure" as a solution to the Huddle household's discontent, and Clovis, who has overheard the entire conversation, decides to amuse himself by delivering the unrest-cure himself.

The story doesn't take ten minutes to read, and we highly recommend it as an antidote to a jaundiced-eyed view of the world.

(We recommend the Project Gutenberg edition of The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki. After clicking on the link, use your browser's "find" function to locate "The Unrest-Cure.")