Andiron Tales Page 7

  CHAPTER VI.

  The Literary Bellows

  "What kept you so long?" asked the Poker, as the Andiron and Bellows cameup. "Was our friend Bellows out of breath, or what?"

  "No, I wasn't out of breath," said the Bellows. "I never am out of breath.You might as well expect a groceryman to be out of groceries as a bellowsto be out of breath. I wasn't long, either--at least, no longer thanusual, which is two foot three. A longer bellows than that would beuseless for our purpose. I simply didn't want to come, that's all. I wasvery busy writing when they interrupted me."

  "It was very kind of you to come when you didn't want to," said Tom.

  "No, it wasn't," said the Bellows. "I didn't want to come then, I don'twant to be here now, and I wouldn't blow the cloud an inch for you if Ididn't have to."

  "But why do you have to?" asked Tom.

  "I'm outvoted, that's all," replied the Bellows. "You see, my dearWeasel"--

  "Dormouse," whispered the Poker.

  "I mean Dormouse," said the Bellows, correcting himself. "You see, Ibelieve in everybody having a say in regard to everything. I always haveeverything I can put to a vote. Consequently, when Righty here came downand asked me to help blow the cloud over and I said that I wouldn't do ithe called Lefty in, and we put it to a vote as to whether I'd have to ornot. They voted that I must and I voted that I needn't, and, of course,that beat me; so here I am."

  "Well, it's very good of you, just the same," said the Poker. "You aren'tquite as good-natured as I am, but you come pretty near it. Most peoplewould have left a matter of that kind entirely to themselves and thenvoted the way they felt like voting. You aren't selfish, anyhow."

  "Yes, I am," said the Bellows. "I'm awfully selfish."

  "You're not, either," said the Poker.

  "Oh, goodness!" ejaculated the Bellows. "What's the use of fighting? I sayI am."

  "WHAT'S THE USE OF FIGHTING?"]

  "Let's have a vote on it," said Righty. "I vote he isn't."

  "So do I," said Tom.

  "Me, too," said Lefty.

  "Those are my sentiments likewise," put in the Poker.

  "Oh, very well, then, I'm not," said the Bellows, with a deep drawn sigh;"but I do wish you'd let me have my own way about some things. I want tobe selfish, even if I'm not."

  "Well, we are very sorry," said the Poker, "but we can't let you be; weneed you too much to permit you to be selfish. Besides, you're too good afellow to be selfish. I knew a boy who was selfish once, and he got intoall sorts of trouble. Nobody liked him, and once when he gave a big dinnerto a lot of other boys not one of them would come, and he had to eat allthe dinner himself. The result was that he overate himself, ruined hisdigestion, and all the rest of his life had to do without pies and cakeand other good things. It served him right, too. Do you think we are goingto let you be like that, Mr. Bellows?"

  "I suppose not," said the Bellows, "but stories about selfish boys don'tfrighten me. I'm a bellows, not a boy. I don't give dinners and I don'teat pie and cake. Plain air is good enough for me, and I wouldn't give acent for all the other good eatables in the world except doughnuts. I likedoughnuts because, after all, they are only bellows cakes. But come, let'shurry up with the cloud. I want to get back to my desk. I have a poem tofinish before breakfast."

  This statement interested Tom hugely. He had read many a book, but neverbefore had he met a real author, and even if the Bellows had been a man,so long as he was a writer, Tom would have looked upon him with awe.

  "Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away atthe cloud, "do you really write?"

  "I blow a story or two, now and then."]

  "Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story ortwo now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, butI can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which anymagazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of mystories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made atremendous noise in the world when it came out."

  "I wish you would tell me one," said Tom.

  "Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows.

  "No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same."

  "Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and thered apple."

  "Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples."

  "So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. Heate a red apple while it was green and it killed him."

  There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts tomove the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily.

  "Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for theBellows to resume.

  "What on?" asked the Bellows.

  "On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," Tom answered.

  "Why, I've told you that story," retorted the Bellows. "Jimmie ate the redapple and died. What more do you want? That's all there is to it."

  "It isn't a very long story," suggested Tom, ruefully, for he was muchdisappointed.

  "Well, why should it be?" demanded the Bellows. "A story doesn't have tobe long to be good, and as long as it is all there--"

  "I know," said Tom; "but in most stories there's a lot of things put inthat help to make it interesting."

  "All padding!" sneered the Bellows, "and that I will never do. If a storycan be told in five words what's the use of padding it out to fivethousand?"

  "None," said Tom, "except that you can't make a book out of a story offive words."

  "Oh, yes, you can," said the Bellows, airily. "It isn't any trouble at allif you only know how, and in the end you have a much more useful book thanif you made it a million words long. You can print the five words on thefirst page and leave the other five hundred pages blank, so that after youget through with the volume as a story book you can use it for a blankbook or a diary. Most books nowadays are so full of story that when youget through with them there isn't anything else you can do with the book."

  "It's a new idea," said Tom, with a laugh.

  "And all my own invention, too," said the Bellows proudly.

  "He's the most inventive Bellows that ever was," put in the Poker, "thatis, in a literary way. How many copies of your book of 'Unwritten Poems'did you sell, Wheezy?" he added.

  "Eight million," returned the Bellows. "That was probably my greatestliterary achievement."

  "'Unwritten Poems,' eh?" said Tom, to whom the title seemed curious.

  "Yes," said the Bellows. "The book had three hundred pages, all nicelybound--twenty-six lines to a page--and each beginning with a capitalletter, just as poetry should. Then, so as to be quite fair to all theletters, I began with A and went right straight through the alphabet toZ."

  "But the poems?" demanded Tom.

  "They were unwritten just as the title said," returned the Bellows. "Yousee that left everything to the imagination, which is a great thing inpoetry."

  "Didn't people complain?" Tom asked.

  "Everybody did," replied the Bellows, "but that was just what I wanted. Iagreed to answer every complaint accompanied by ten cents in postagestamps. Eight million complaints alone brought me in $480,000 over andabove all expenses, which were four cents per complaint."

  "But what was your answer?" demanded Tom.

  "I merely told them that my book stood upon its own merits, and that ifthey didn't like my unwritten poems they could write some of their own onthe blank pages of the book. It was a perfectly fair proposition," theBellows replied.

  "I think I like written poetry best, though," said Tom.

  "That's entirely a matter of taste," said the Bellows, "and I shan't findfault with you for that. The only thing is that Unwritten Poems are apt tohave fewer faults than the written ones, and every great poet will tellyou that nobody ever detected any mistakes in his poems until he had putthem down on paper. If he had left them unwritten nobody would ever haveknown how bad they were."

  T
om scratched his head in a puzzled mood. He could not quite grasp theBellows' meaning.

  "What do you think about it, Righty?" he demanded of the Andiron.

  "Oh, I don't think anything about it," replied Righty. "I haven't watchedpoetry much. You see, Lefty and I don't see much of it. People light firesnowadays more with newspapers than with poetry."

  "What I've seen burns well," observed the Lefthandiron, "and don't makemuch ashes to get into your eyes; but, say, Wheezy, if you'll do yourblowing about this cloud rather than about your poetry we may getsomewhere."

  "Very well," said the Bellows; "fasten your hats on tight and turn up yourcollars. I'm going to give you a regular tornado."

  And he was as good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmostlimit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch,sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into fourseparate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off tothe north, while the other three sped south, east and west, respectively.

  "HE GAVE A TREMENDOUS WHEEZE."]

  "Hi, there," cried Righty, as he perceived the damage done to their fleecychariot. "What are you up to? We don't want to be blown to the fourcorners of the earth. Pull in--pull in, for goodness sake, or we'll neverget together again!"

  "There's no satisfying you fellows," growled the Bellows. "First I don'tblow enough, and then I blow too much."

  "Stop growling and haul us back again!" cried the Poker.

  The Bellows began to haul in his breath rapidly, and by a process ofsuction soon had the four parts of the burst cloud back together oncemore.

  "By jingo!" panted Lefty. "That was a narrow escape. Two seconds more andthis party would have been a goner. Even as it is, you've twisted my neckso I'll never get it back in shape again," said the Righthandiron.

  "Well, I'm sorry," said the Bellows, "but it's all your own fault. Youasked me to blow the cloud, and I blew it. You didn't say where you wantedit blown."

  "You needn't have blown it to smithereens, just the same!" retorted thePoker. "It doesn't cost anything to ask a question now and then."

  "Where, then?" demanded the Bellows.

  "I'd like to find my hat," said Tom.

  "Very well," said the Bellows. "I see it speeding off toward the moon, andwe'll chase after it, but we'll never catch it if it misses the moon andfalls past it into space."

  The Poker rose to his full height and peered after the cap, which, even asthe Bellows had said, was sailing rapidly off in the direction of thecrescent moon, which lay to the west and below them.

  "Hurrah!" he cried. "It's all right."

  "Can you see it still?" asked Tom, anxiously, for his cap was made ofsealskin and he didn't wish to lose it.

  "Yes, it's all right," said the Poker. "It nearly missed, but not quite.If you will look through these glasses you will see it."

  The Poker handed Tom a pair of strong field glasses and the lad, gazinganxiously through them, was delighted to see his wandering cap hanging, asif on a great golden hook in the sky beneath them, and which was nothingmore than the last appearance of the moon itself.

  "Good!" cried the Righthandiron. "That settles the question for us ofwhere we shall go next. There is no choice left. We'll go to the moon.Heave ahead, Wheezy."

  Whereupon the Bellows began to blow, at first gently, then stronger andstronger, and yet more strongly still, until the cloud was moving rapidlyin the direction they desired.