Mollie and the Unwiseman Page 9

  IX. The Poems of the Unwiseman.In which Mollie listens to some remarkable verses.

  Few]

  days after he had received the pencil and pad and rhyming dictionaryfrom Mollie, the Unwiseman wrote to his little benefactress and askedher to visit him as soon as she could.

  "I've written eight pounds of poetry!"]

  "I've written eight pounds of poetry," he said in his letter, "and I'dlike to know what you think of some of it. I've given up the idea ofselling it by the yard because it uses up so much paper, and I'm goingto put it out at a dollar a pound. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like tohave you tell your papa about this and ask him if he hasn't any heavierpaper than the lot he sent me. If he could let me have a million sheetsof paper twice as heavy as the other I could write a pound of sonnits inhalf the time, and could accordingly afford to give them to him a littlecheaper for use in his newspaper. I'd have been up to see you lastnight, but somehow or other my house got moved out to Illinois, whichwas too far away. It is back again in New York this morning, however, sothat you won't find any trouble in getting him to see the poetry, and,by the way, while I think of it, I wish you'd ask your papa if Illinoisrhymes with boy or boys. I want to write a poem about Illinois, but Idon't know whether to begin it with

  "_'O, the boys, Of Illinois, They utterly upset my equipoise';_

  "_'O, thou boy, Of Illinois! My peace of mind thou dust destroy?'_

  "You see, my dear, it is important to know at the start whether you arewriting about one boy or several boys; and that rhyming dictionary yousent me doesn't say anything about such a contiguity. You might ask him,too, what is the meaning of contiguity. It's a word I admire, and I wantto work it in somewhere where it will not only look well, but make acertain amount of sense.

  "Yoors tooly, "ME."

  It was hardly to be expected, after an invitation of this sort, thatMollie should delay visiting the Unwiseman for an instant, so summoningWhistlebinkie and Gyp, she and her two little friends started out, andere long they caught sight of the Unwiseman's house, standing on onecorner of the village square, and in front of it was a peculiar lookingbooth, something like a banana-stand in its general outlines. This wascovered from top to bottom with placards, which filled Mollie withuncontrollable mirth, when she saw what was printed on them. Here iswhat some of them said:

  GO TO ME'S FOR POTERY.

  This was the most prominent of the placards, and was nailed to the topof the booth. On the right side of this was:

  LISENSED TO SELL SONNITS ON THE PREMISSES.

  Off to the left, printed in red crayon, the curious old man had tackedthis:

  EPIKS WROTE WHILE YOU WEIGHT.

  Besides these signs, on the counter of this little stand were arranged adozen or more piles of manuscript, and behind each of these piles wereshort sticks holding up small cards marked "five cents an ounce," "tencents a pound," and back of all a larger card, which read:

  SPESHUL DISSCOUNTS TO ALL COSTUMERS ORDERING BY THE TUN.

  "This looks like business," said Whistlebinkie.

  "Yes," said Mollie, with a laugh. "Like the peanut business."

  Gyp said nothing for a moment, but after sniffing it all over began togrowl at a placard at the base of the stand on which was drawn by theUnwiseman's unmistakable hand the picture of two small dogs playingtogether with a line to this effect:

  DOGGERELL A SPESHIALITY.

  As Mollie and Whistlebinkie were reading these signs the door of theUnwiseman's house was opened and the proprietor appeared. He smiledpleasantly when he saw who his visitors were, although if Mollie hadbeen close enough to him to hear it she might have noticed that he gavea little sigh.

  "I didn't recognize you at first," he said; "I thought you might becustomers, and I delayed coming out so that you wouldn't think I was tooanxious to sell my wares. Of course, I am very anxious to sell 'em, butit don't do to let the public know that. Let 'em understand that you arewilling to sell and they'll very likely buy; but if you come tumblingout of your house pell-mell every time anybody stops to see what you'vegot they'll think maybe you aren't well off, and they'll either beat youdown or not buy at all."

  "Aren't you afraid of being robbed though?" Mollie asked.

  "The newspapers would be full of it."]

  "Oh, I wouldn't mind being robbed," replied the Unwiseman. "It would bea good thing for me if somebody would steal a pound or two of my poems.That would advertise my business. I can't afford to advertise mybusiness, but if I should be robbed it would be news, and, of course,the newspapers would be full of it. Your father doesn't know of anykind-hearted burglar who's temporarily out of work who'd be willing torob a poor man without charge does he?"

  "No," said Mollie, "I don't think papa knows any burglars at all. Wehave literary men, and editors, and men like that visiting the houseall the time, but so far we haven't had any burglars."

  "Well, I suppose I'll have to trust to luck for 'em," sighed theUnwiseman; "though it would be a great thing if an extra should come outwith great big black headlines, and newsboys yelling 'em out all overthe country, 'The Unwiseman's Potery Stand Visited by Burglars! EightPounds of Triolets Missing! The Police on the Track of thePlunderers!'"

  "It would be a splendid advertisement," said Mollie. "But I'm afraidyou'll be a long time getting it. Have you any poems to show me?"

  "Yes," said the Unwiseman, running his eye over his stock. "Yes, indeed,I have. Here's one I like very much. Shall I read it to you?"

  "Yes, if you will," said Mollie. "What is it about?"

  "It's about three dozen to the pound, the way I weigh it," replied theUnwiseman. "It's called 'My Wish, and Why I Wish It.'"

  "That's an awfully long name, isn't it?" said Mollie.

  The unwiseman reads his poem, "My wish and why I wishedit."]

  "Yes, but it makes the poem a little heavier," replied the old man."I've made up a little for its length, too, by making the poem short.It's only a quartrain. Here's how it goes:

  "_I wish the sun would shine at night, Instead of in the day, dear, For that would make the evenings bright, And day time would be shadier!_"

  "Why, that isn't bad!" cried Mollie.

  "No," returned the Unwiseman. "I didn't try to make it bad, though Icould have if I'd wanted to. But there's a great thing about the thoughtin that poem, and if you'll only look into it you'll see how wonderfulit is. It can be used over and over again without anybody's evernoticing that it's been used before. Here's another poem with just thesame idea running through it:

  "_I wish the oceans all were dry, And arid deserts were not land, dear, If we could walk on oceans--My! And sail on deserts, 'twould be handier._"

  "How is that the same idea?" asked Mollie, a little puzzled to catch theUnwiseman's point.

  "Why, the whole notion is that you wish things were as they aren't,that's all; and when you consider how many things there are in the worldthat are as they are and aren't as they aren't, you get some notion asto how many poems you can make out of that one idea. For instance,children hate to go to bed at night, preferring to fall asleep on thelibrary rug. So you might have this:

  "_I wish that cribs were always rugs, 'Twould fill me chock up with delight, For then, like birds and tumble-bugs, I'd like to go to bed at night._"

  "Tumble-bugs don't like to go to bed at night," said Mollie. "They liketo buzz around and hit their heads against the wall."

  "I know that; but I have two excuses for using tumble-bugs in thatrhyme. In the first place, I haven't written that rhyme yet, and so itcan't be criticized. It's only what the dictionary people would callextemporious. I made it up on the spur of the moment, and from thatstandpoint it's rather clever. The other excuse is that even if I hadwritten it as I spoke it, poets are allowed to say things they don'texactly mean, as long as in general they bring out their idea clearlyenough to give the reader something to puzzle over."

  "Well, I suppose you k
now what you mean," said Mollie, more mystifiedthan ever. "Have you got any more poems?"

  "Could not restore Namby to where he was at."]

  "Yes. Here's a new bit of Mother Goose I've dashed off:

  "_Namby Pamby sat on the fence, Namby Pamby tumbled from thence. Half the queen's donkeys, her dog, and her cat, Could not restore Namby to where he was at._"

  "Why!" cried Mollie. "You can't write that. It's nothing but HumptyDumpty all over again."

  "You're all wrong there," retorted the Unwiseman. "And I can prove it.You say that I can't write that. Well, I _have_ written it, whichproves that I _can_. As for its being Humpty Dumpty all over again,that's plain nonsense. Namby Pamby is not Humpty Dumpty. Namby Pambybegins with an N and a P, while Humpty Dumpty begins with H and D. Then,again, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. My hero sat on a fence. HumptyDumpty fell. Namby Pamby tumbled--and so it goes all through the poem.Mine is entirely different. Besides, it's a hysterical episode, and I'vegot just as much right to make poems about hystery as Mother Goose had."

  "Maybe you're right," said Mollie. "But if I were you, I wouldn't writethings that are too much like what other people have written."

  "I don't see why," said the Unwiseman, impatiently. "If Peter Smithwrites a poem that everybody likes and buys, I want to write somethingas much like what Peter Smith has made a fortune out of as Peter Smithhas. That's the point. But we won't quarrel about it. Girls don't knowmuch about business, and men do. I'm a man and you're only a girl."

  "Well, I think Mollie's right," put in Whistlebinkie.

  "You have to," retorted the Unwiseman. "If you didn't, she'd pack you upin a box and send you out to the sheathen."

  "The what?" asked Mollie.

  "The Sheathen."]

  "The sheathen. Little girl savages. I call 'em sheathen to extinguishthem from heathen, who are, as I understand it, little boy savages,"explained the Unwiseman. "But what do you think of this for a poem. It'scalled Night, and you mustn't laugh at it because it is serious:

  "_Oh night, dear night, in street and park, Where'er thou beest thou'rt always dark. Thou dustent change, O sweet brunette, No figgleness is thine, you bet. And what I love the best, on land or sea, Is absence of the vice of figglety._"

  "What's figglety?" asked Mollie.

  "Figglety?" echoed the Unwiseman. "Don't you know that? Figglety isfiggleness, or the art of being figgle."

  "But I don't know what being figgle is," said Mollie.

  "Hoh!" sneered the Unwiseman, angry at Mollie's failure to understandand to admire his serious poem. "Where have you been brought up? Figgleis changing. If you pretend to like pie to-day better than anything, andchange around to pudding to-morrow, you are figgle. Some people spell itfickle, but somehow or other I like figgle better. It's a word of myown, figgle is, while fickle is a word everybody uses--but I won'targue with you any more," he added with an impatient gesture. "You'vefound fault with almost everything I've done, and I'm not going to readany more to you. It's discouraging enough to have people pass you by andnot buy your poems, without reading 'em to a little girl that findsfault with 'em, backed up in her opinion by a pug dog and a rubber dolllike Whistlebinkie. Some time, when you are better natured, I'll readmore to you, but now I won't."

  Saying which, the Unwiseman turned away and walked into his house,banging the door behind him in a way which plainly showed that he wasoffended.

  Mollie and Whistlebinkie and Gyp went silently home, very unhappy aboutthe Unwiseman's temper, but, though they did not know it, they were veryfortunate to get away before the Unwiseman discovered that themischievous Gyp had chewed up three pounds of sonnets while theirauthor was reading his poem "Night," so that on the whole, I think, theywere to be congratulated that things turned out as they did.