The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Servant Problem, by Robert F. Young

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Title: The Servant Problem

Author: Robert F. Young

Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23232]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

The Servant Problem

Selling a whole town, and doing it inconspicuously, can be a little
difficult ... either giving it away freely, or in a more normal
sense of "selling". People don't quite believe it....

by Robert J. Young

Illustrated by Schoenherr

[Illustration]

If you have ever lived in a small town, you have seen Francis Pfleuger,
and probably you have sent him after sky-hooks, left-handed
monkey-wrenches and pails of steam, and laughed uproariously behind his
back when he set forth to do your bidding. The Francis Pfleugers of the
world have inspired both fun and laughter for generations out of mind.

The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with here lived in a small town
named Valleyview, and in addition to suffering the distinction of being
the village idiot, he also suffered the distinction of being the village
inventor. These two distinctions frequently go hand in hand, and afford,
in their incongruous togetherness, an even greater inspiration for fun
and laughter. For in this advanced age of streamlined electric can
openers and sleek pop-up toasters, who but the most naive among us can
fail to be titillated by the thought of a buck-toothed, wall-eyed moron
building Rube Goldberg contrivances in his basement?

The Francis Pfleuger we are concerned with did his inventing in his
kitchen rather than in his basement; nevertheless, his machines were in
the Rube Goldberg tradition. Take the one he was assembling now, for
example. It stood on the kitchen table, and its various attachments
jutted this way and that with no apparent rhyme or reason. In its center
there was a transparent globe that looked like an upside-down goldfish
bowl, and in the center of the bowl there was an object that startlingl