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W. C. Fields
bought everything in half-dozen quantities," Miss Michael says. "Whenever he found something he liked, he usually felt that he'd better get quite a few while they lasted." At Carmel he inexplicably had the chauffeur pull up beside a big jewelry store, into which he proceeded and bought everybody half-a-dozen electric clocks. The purchase required a good deal of room ; the chauffeur, though grateful and in an excellent position to keep track of the time for three or four hundred years, was hard pressed to get the bundle into the luggage compartment. The jeweler (who acknowledged in an aside to one of the group that the store hadn't put in such a day since his grandfather, a Spaniard, founded it not long after the gold rush) came out to see them off. "Thanks a lot, Mr. Fields," he kept saying. "Gome in again — we've got a nice line of fountain pens, desk sets, silver-mounted brushes "
For reasons best known to himself, Fields preferred to maintain a fiction of anonymity. "My name," he interrupted testily, "is Oglethorpe P. Bushmaster, of Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania. I am not acquainted with anyone by the name of Fields."
"Of course, of course, Mr. Bushwhacker," cried the jeweler, noting the California license plates. "Come back again, Mr. Fields. We also got some nice loving cups, dinner trays, carving sets, knock down a nice cut-glass centerpiece "
"Bushmaster!" roared Fields, and to his chauffeur, "Drive on!"
When they got home, Fields told the group that, as picnics went, it had been very satisfactory, almost as good as the one he had gone on years before when he left Long Island in the middle of the night and regained consciousness in Ocala, Florida.
Often, after an expensive sortie, and especially if he weren't working, Fields felt a strong financial reaction. He would examine the household accounts, make a lot of mysterious figures in a notebook, and then announce, with terrible gravity, that "we've got to cut down around here." His favorite expression to describe
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