ANIMAL STORIES
II
_How Lillian Mosquito Projects Her Voice_
All the children came crowding around Mother Nature one cold, raw afternoon in summer, crying in unison:
"Oh, Mother Nature, you promised us that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice! You promised that you would tell us how Lillian Mosquito projects her voice!"
"So I did! So I did!" said Mother Nature, laying down an oak, the leaves of which she was tipping with scarlet for the fall trade. "And so I will! So I will!"
At which Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus jumped with imitation joy, for they had hoped to have an afternoon off.
Mother Nature led them across the fields to the piazza of a clubhouse on which there was an exposed ankle belonging to one of the members. There, as she had expected, they found Lillian Mosquito having tea.
"Lillian," called Mother Nature, "come off a minute. I have some little friends here who would like to know how it is that you manage to hum in such a manner as to give the impression of being just outside the ear of a person in bed, when actually you are across the room."
"Will you kindly repeat the question?" said Lillian flying over to the railing.
"We want to know," said Mother Nature, "how it is that very often, when you have been fairly caught, it turns out that you have escaped without injury."
"I would prefer to answer the question as it was first put," said Lillian.
So Waldo Lizard, Edna Elephant and Lawrence Walrus, seeing that there was no way out, cried:
"Yes, yes, Lillian, do tell us."
"First of all, you must know," began Lillian Mosquito, "that my chief duty is to annoy. Whatever else I do, however many bites I total in the course of the evening, I do not consider that I have "made good" unless I have caused a great deal of annoyance while doing it. A bite, quietly executed and not discovered by the victim until morning, does me no good. It is my duty, and my pleasure, to play with him before biting, as you have often heard a cat plays with a mouse, tormenting him with apprehension and making him struggle to defend himself.... If I am using too long words for you, please stop me."
"Stop!" cried Waldo Lizard, reaching for his hat, with the idea of possibly getting to the ball park by the fifth inning.
But he was prevented from leaving by kindly old Mother Nature, who stepped on him with her kindly old heel, and Lillian Mosquito continued:
"I must therefore, you see, be able to use my little voice with great skill. Of course, the first thing to do is to make my victim think that I am nearer to him than I really am. To do this, I sit quite still, let us say, on the footboard of the bed, and, beginning to hum in a very, very low tone of voice, increase the volume and raise the pitch gradually, thereby giving the effect of approaching the pillow.
"The man in bed thinks that he hears me coming toward his head, and I can often see him, waiting with clenched teeth until he thinks that I am near enough to swat. Sometimes I strike a quick little grace-note, as if I were right above him and about to make a landing. It is great fun at such times to see him suddenly strike himself over the ear (they always think that I am right at their ear), and then feel carefully between his finger tips to see if he has caught me. Then, too, there is always the pleasure of thinking that perhaps he has hurt himself quite badly by the blow. I have often known victims of mine to deafen themselves permanently by jarring their eardrums in their wild attempts to catch me."
"What fun! What fun!" cried Edna Elephant. "I must try it myself just as soon as ever I get home."
"It is often a good plan to make believe that you have been caught after one of the swats," continued Lillian Mosquito, "and to keep quiet for a while. It makes him c.o.c.ky. He thinks that he has demonstrated the superiority of man over the rest of the animals. Then he rolls over and starts to sleep. This is the time to begin work on him again. After he has slapped himself all over the face and head, and after he has put on the light and made a search of the room and then gone back to bed to think up some new words, that is the time when I usually bring the climax about.
"Gradually approaching him from the right, I hum loudly at his ear.
Then, suddenly becoming quiet, I fly silently and quickly around to his neck. Just as he hits himself on the ear, I bite his neck and fly away.
And, _voila_, there you are!"
"How true that is!" said Mother Nature. "_Voila_, there we are!... Come, children, let us go now, for we must be up bright and early to-morrow to learn how Lois Hen scratches up the beets and Swiss chard in the gentlemen"s gardens."
x.x.xV
THE TARIFF UNMASKED
Let us get this tariff thing cleared up, once and for all. An explanation is due the American people, and obviously this is the place to make it.
Viewing the whole thing, schedule by schedule, we find it indefensible.
In Schedule A alone the list of necessities on which the tax is to be raised includes Persian berries, extract of nutgalls and isingla.s.s. Take isingla.s.s alone. With prices shooting up in this market, what is to become of our picture post-cards? Where once for a nickel you could get a picture of the Woolworth Building ablaze with lights with the sun setting and the moon rising in the background, under the proposed tariff it will easily set you back fifteen cents. This is all very well for the rich who can get their picture post-cards at wholesale, but how are the poor to get their art?
The only justifiable increase in this schedule is on "blues, in pulp, dried, etc." If this will serve to reduce the amount of "Those Lonesome-Onesome-Wonesome Blues" and "I"ve Got the Left-All-Alone-in-The-Magazine-Reading-Room-of-the-Public-Library Blues"
with which our popular song market has been flooded for the past five years, we could almost bring ourselves to vote for the entire tariff bill as it stands.
_Schedule B_
Here we find a tremendous increase in the tax on grindstones.
Householders and travelers in general do not appreciate what this means.
It means that, next year, when you are returning from Europe, you will have to pay a duty on those Dutch grindstones that you always bring back to the cousins, a duty which will make the importation of more than three prohibitive. This will lead to an orgy of grindstone smuggling, making it necessary for hitherto respectable people to become law-breakers by concealing grindstones about their clothing and in the trays of their trunks. Think this over.
_Schedule C_
Right at the start of this list we find charcoal bars being boosted.
Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey"s charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the tax on gypsum?
_Schedule D_
A way to evade the injustice of this schedule is in the matter of marble slabs. "Marble slabs, rubbed" are going to cost more to import than "marble slabs, unrubbed." What we are planning to do in this office is to get in a quant.i.ty of unrubbed marble slabs and then rub them ourselves. A coa.r.s.e, dry towel is very good for rubbing, they say.
Any further discussion of the details of this iniquitous tariff would only enrage us to a point of incoherence. Perhaps a short list of some of the things you will have to do without under the new arrangement will serve to enrage you also:
Senegal gum, buchu leaves, lava tips for burners, magic lantern strips, spiegeleisen nut washers, butchers" skewers and gun wads.
Now write to your congressman!
LITERARY DEPARTMENT
x.x.xVI
"TAKE ALONG A BOOK"