Harpo Speaks!

by Harpo Marx

When I was a kid there really was no Future. Struggling through one twenty-four-hour span was rough enough without brooding about the next one. You could laugh about the Past, because you’d been lucky enough to survive it. But mainly there was only a Present to worry about.

School didn’t teach you what to do when you were stopped by an enemy gang—when to run, when to stand your ground. School didn’t teach you how to collect tennis balls, build a scooter, ride the El trains and trolleys, hitch onto delivery wagons, own a dog, go for a swim, get a chunk of ice or a piece of fruit—all without paying a cent. School didn’t teach you which hockshops would give you dough without asking where you got your merchandise, or how to shoot pool or bet on a poker hand or where to sell junk or how to find sleeping room in a bed with four other brothers. School simply didn’t teach you how to be poor and live from day to day. This I had to learn for myself, the best way I could. In the streets I was, according to present-day standards, a juvenile delinquent. But by the East Side standards of 1902, I was an honor student.

But Frenchie never stopped smiling, and his smile was like a secret radiation. All of us who were exposed to it were affected for life. We had burned into us the meaning of loyalty and forgiveness, and of the futility of anger. I loved this man.