Psmith is a character in some PG Wodehouse novels. Even as I type the name, my computer’s autocorrect seeks to eliminate the P and make it ‘Smith’. Wodehouse would no doubt be delighted as he often played upon the ‘silent P’. I have not read many of the Psmith stories as I’ve been more of a ‘Blandings’ fan. But I did enjoy this little excerpt in the way it reacts to the chains which can be so easily placed upon us. Psmith is meeting Billy Windsor (sub editor of the Journal magazine called cosy moments):
Windsor: just at present I’m acting as editor.
Ah! Then at last you have your big chance. You are a free, untrammelled.
You bet I’m not, said Billy Windsor. Guess again. There is no room for developing free untrammelled ideas on this paper. When you’ve looked at it, you’ll see that each page is run by someone. I’m simply the fellow who minds the shop.
Psmith clicked his tongue sympathetically. It is like setting a gifted French chef to wash up dishes, he said. A man of your undoubted powers, comrade Windsor, should have more scope. That is the cry, more scope. I must look into this matter. When I gaze at your broad, bulging forehead, when I see the clear light of intelligence in your eyes, and here the grey matter splashing restlessly about in your cerebellum, I say to myself without hesitation, comrade Windsor must have more scope. He looked at Mike … (first page of chapter 5).
MORE SCOPE – Wodehouse excelling again.
Last Sunday, we had 1 Corinthians 3 read which closes with the apostle expressing that ‘all things are yours’.
“So let no on boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-22.)
The apostle is closing a long argument but he does so by showing that their viewpoint is too narrow and constricted. In short, as Psmith would have put it: ‘Corinthians, you must have more scope.’