[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 dictionary from Mollie, the Unwiseman wrote to his little benefactress and asked her to visit him as soon as she could.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I"ve written eight pounds of poetry!"]
"I"ve written eight pounds of poetry," he said in his letter, "and I"d like to know what you think of some of it. I"ve given up the idea of selling it by the yard because it uses up so much paper, and I"m going to put it out at a dollar a pound. If you wouldn"t mind, I"d like to have you tell your papa about this and ask him if he hasn"t any heavier paper than the lot he sent me. If he could let me have a million sheets of paper twice as heavy as the other I could write a pound of sonnits in half the time, and could accordingly afford to give them to him a little cheaper for use in his newspaper. I"d have been up to see you last night, but somehow or other my house got moved out to Illinois, which was too far away. It is back again in New York this morning, however, so that 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 Illinois rhymes with boy or boys. I want to write a poem about Illinois, but I don"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 are writing about one boy or several boys; and that rhyming dictionary you sent 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 want to work it in somewhere where it will not only look well, but make a certain amount of sense.
"Yoors tooly, "ME."
It was hardly to be expected, after an invitation of this sort, that Mollie should delay visiting the Unwiseman for an instant, so summoning Whistlebinkie and Gyp, she and her two little friends started out, and ere long they caught sight of the Unwiseman"s house, standing on one corner of the village square, and in front of it was a peculiar looking booth, something like a banana-stand in its general outlines. This was covered from top to bottom with placards, which filled Mollie with uncontrollable mirth, when she saw what was printed on them. Here is what some of them said:
GO TO ME"S FOR POTERY.
This was the most prominent of the placards, and was nailed to the top of 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 tacked this:
EPIKS WROTE WHILE YOU WEIGHT.
Besides these signs, on the counter of this little stand were arranged a dozen or more piles of ma.n.u.script, and behind each of these piles were short sticks holding up small cards marked "five cents an ounce," "ten cents 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 to growl at a placard at the base of the stand on which was drawn by the Unwiseman"s unmistakable hand the picture of two small dogs playing together with a line to this effect:
DOGGERELL A SPESHIALITY.
As Mollie and Whistlebinkie were reading these signs the door of the Unwiseman"s house was opened and the proprietor appeared. He smiled pleasantly when he saw who his visitors were, although if Mollie had been close enough to him to hear it she might have noticed that he gave a little sigh.
"I didn"t recognize you at first," he said; "I thought you might be customers, and I delayed coming out so that you wouldn"t think I was too anxious to sell my wares. Of course, I am very anxious to sell "em, but it don"t do to let the public know that. Let "em understand that you are willing to sell and they"ll very likely buy; but if you come tumbling out of your house pell-mell every time anybody stops to see what you"ve got they"ll think maybe you aren"t well off, and they"ll either beat you down or not buy at all."
"Aren"t you afraid of being robbed though?" Mollie asked.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "The newspapers would be full of it."]
"Oh, I wouldn"t mind being robbed," replied the Unwiseman. "It would be a 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 my business, 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 any kind-hearted burglar who"s temporarily out of work who"d be willing to rob a poor man without charge does he?"
"No," said Mollie, "I don"t think papa knows any burglars at all. We have literary men, and editors, and men like that visiting the house all the time, but so far we haven"t had any burglars."
"Well, I suppose I"ll have to trust to luck for "em," sighed the Unwiseman; "though it would be a great thing if an extra should come out with great big black headlines, and newsboys yelling "em out all over the country, "The Unwiseman"s Potery Stand Visited by Burglars! Eight Pounds of Triolets Missing! The Police on the Track of the Plunderers!""
"It would be a splendid advertis.e.m.e.nt," said Mollie. "But I"m afraid you"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 the Unwiseman. "It"s called "My Wish, and Why I Wish It.""
"That"s an awfully long name, isn"t it?" said Mollie.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The unwiseman reads his poem, "My wish and why I wished it."]
"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 I could have if I"d wanted to. But there"s a great thing about the thought in that poem, and if you"ll only look into it you"ll see how wonderful it is. It can be used over and over again without anybody"s ever noticing that it"s been used before. Here"s another poem with just the same 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 the Unwiseman"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 world that are as they are and aren"t as they aren"t, you get some notion as to 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 the library 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 like to buzz around and hit their heads against the wall."
"I know that; but I have two excuses for using tumble-bugs in that rhyme. In the first place, I haven"t written that rhyme yet, and so it can"t be criticized. It"s only what the dictionary people would call extemporious. I made it up on the spur of the moment, and from that standpoint it"s rather clever. The other excuse is that even if I had written it as I spoke it, poets are allowed to say things they don"t exactly mean, as long as in general they bring out their idea clearly enough to give the reader something to puzzle over."
"Well, I suppose you know what you mean," said Mollie, more mystified than ever. "Have you got any more poems?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Could not restore Namby to where he was at."]