Part 6

He's won success where others failed; he's built a weird machine, composed of cranks and doodads and propelled by gasoline, that circles proudly overhead, as graceful in its flight, as any eagle that cavorts along the airy height. When Wilbur and his brother bold began their march to fame, the sages of the village sneered, and said: "What is their game? Do these here loonies really think that they can make a trap of iron and brass and canvas things, and junk and other scrap, with which to leave the solid earth, and plow the atmosphere? By jings! It isn't safe for them to be at large, that's clear." But Wilbur and his brother bold, whose courage never fails, kept on a-patching up their trap with wire and tin and nails, they built a new cafoozelum, improved the rinktyram, and tinkered up the doodlewhang until it wouldn't jam; and then one morning up they flew, and all the village seers just stood around and pawed the ground and chewed each other's ears. Good luck be with those Dayton boys--good luck in every flight! It is a pleasant rite to write that Wright is strictly right!

_The Broncho_

You haven't much sense, but I love you well, O wild-eyed broncho of mine! Your heart is hot with the heat of hell, and a cyclone's in your spine; your folly grows with increasing age; you stand by the pasture bars, and bare your teeth in a dotard rage, and kick at the smiling stars. As homely you as the face of sin, with brands on your mottled flanks, and saddle scars on your dusky skin, and burs on your tail and shanks! and old--so old that the men are dead, who branded your neck and side; and their sons have lived and gone to bed, and turned to the wall and died. But it's you for the long, long weary trail, o'er the hills and the desert sand, by the side of the bones of the steeds that fail and perish on either hand. It's you for the steady and tireless lope, through canyon or mountain pass; to be flogged at night with a length of rope, and be fed on a bunch of grass.

_Schubert's Serenade_

There is no tune that grips my heart, and seems to pull me all apart, like this old Serenade; it seems to breathe of distant lands, and orange groves and silver sands, and troubadour and maid. It's freighted with a gentle woe as old as all the seas that flow, as young as yesterday; as changeless as the stars above, as yearning as a woman's love for true knight far away. It seems a prayer, serene and pure; a tale of love that will endure when they who loved are dust, when earthly songs are heard no more, and bridal wreaths are withered sore, and wedding rings are rust. It's weary with a lover's care; it's wailing with a deep despair, that only lovers learn; and yet through all its sadness grope the singing messengers of hope for joys that will return. O, gentle, soothing Serenade! When I am beaten down and frayed, with all my hopes in pawn, when I've forgotten how to laugh, I wind up my old phonograph, and turn the music on! And then I float away, away, to moonlit castles in Cathay, or Araby or Spain, and underneath the glowing skies I read of love in damsels' eyes, and dream, and dream again!

_Mazeppa_

Mazeppa, strapped upon a steed, made sixty miles at frightful speed; through lowland, valley and morass, through verdant strips of garden sass, o'er mountain, brake and flowing stream, he sped, as though propelled by steam. The bear sat up to see him go, the wolves pursued, but had no show; and when at last he reached a town, his dying charger tumbled down. Mazeppa rose, without a scratch, and swiftly wrote a long dispatch, which reached the Sporting Ed. that night: "I've knocked the record flat, all right. No other fellow, anywhere, has traveled on a knee-sprung mare o'er sixty miles of right of way, while trussed up like a bale of hay. Please hire a hall; a statement write, that I will lecture every night, for twenty years--my lecture's fine--the moving picture rights are mine. If any challenger should come, and put up a substantial sum, and say that he'd be glad to ride, upon a raw-boned hearse horse tied, for sixty miles or maybe more, for money, marbles, chalk or gore, just say my last long ride is made, until the lecture graft is played."

_Fashion's Devotee_

She called upon her lawyer, and said to him: "Of course this visit will surprise you--I want a nice divorce." "Why, madam," cried the lawyer, "you're talking through your hat; your husband just adores you, and all the town knows that." "Of course I know he loves me," she answered, with a smile, "but that will cut no figure--divorces are in style. Decrees were won in triumph by friends of mine, of late, and every time I meet them I feel so out of date! I've just come from a party--the swellest of the town; I felt like some old woman who wears a last year's gown; and all the ladies chattered of husbands in their string, decrees of separation, and all that sort of thing." "But, madam," said the lawyer, "what reasons can you give? For better, finer husbands than yours, I think, don't live." "What do I want with reasons?" she answered, in a huff; "I want a separation, and that should be enough; I want the rare distinction a court of justice lends; I'm feeling too old-fashioned among my lady friends. I must have some good reasons? I do not think you're nice; his name is William Henry--that surely will suffice?"

_Christmas_

The Christmas bells again ring out a message sweet and clear; and harmony is round about, and happiness is near; so let us all sing, once again, as on an elder day: "God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!" Forget the office and the mart, the week-day hook and crook, and loosen up your withered heart, as well as pocketbook; forget the ledger and the pen, and watch the children play; God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! The Christmas time with peace is fraught, from strife and sorrow free; and every wish and every thought should kind and gentle be; in worlds beyond our mortal ken this is a holy day; God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! Today, from Eden's plains afar, the shepherds converse hold, and watch again the risen star, as in the days of old; and as those shepherds watched it then, so may we watch today; God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!

_The Tightwad_

The Tightwad is a pleasant soul who freezes strongly to his roll, until he hasn't any; his bundle colors all his dreams, and when awake he's full of schemes to nail another penny. He counts his roubles day by day, and when a nickel gets away, it nearly drives him dotty; he grovels to the man of biz who has a bigger roll than his, and to the poor he's haughty. All things upon this earth are trash that can't be bought or sold for cash, in Tightwad's estimation; the summer breeze, because it turns the cranks of mills and pumps and churns, receives his toleration; the sun is useful in its way; it nourishes the wheat and hay--so let the world be sunny; he likes to hear the raindrops slosh; they help the pumpkin, beet and squash, and such things sell for money. The tightwad often is a bear around his home, and everywhere, and people hate or fear him; since kindness has no market price, it's waste of effort to be nice to victims who are near him. Methinks that when the tightwad dies, and to his retribution flies, his sentence will be funny; they'll load him with a silver hat, and boil him in a golden vat, and feed him red-hot money!

_Blue Blood_

My sires were strong, heroic men, who fought on many a crimson field; and none could better cut a throat, or batter down a foeman's shield; and some were knighted by the king, and went around with golden spurs, which must have been a nuisance when they walked among the cockleburs. Their sires were barons of the Rhine, who worked a now historic graft; they held up travelers by day, and quaffed their sack at night, and laughed; they always slept upon the floor, and never shaved or cut their hair; they pawed their victuals with their hands, and never heard of underwear. Their sires, some centuries before, ran naked through the virgin vales, distinguished from the other apes because they hadn't any tails. And they had sires, still farther back, but that dim past is veiled to me, and so I fear I cannot claim a really flawless pedigree.

_The Cave Man_

When the cave man found that he needed grub to fill out the bill of fare, he went out doors with his trusty club, and slaughtered the nearest bear; and thus he avoided the butcher's fake of selling a pound of bone, and charging it up as the sirloin steak that you ordered by telephone. The cave man wore, as his Sunday best, the skin of a sheep or goat, and a peck of whiskers on his breast, in lieu of a vest or coat; so he nothing knew of the tailor's knack of sewing a vest all wrong, and making a coat with a crooked back, and the pants half a foot too long. The cave man swallowed his victuals raw, as he sat on his nice mud floor; and his only tool was his faithful jaw, and he wanted for nothing more. He took his drinks at the babbling brook, and healthy and gay was he; and he never swore at the bungling cook for spoiling the pie or tea.

_Rudyard Kipling_

Alas for R. Kipling! When he was a stripling, and filled with the fire of his age, he looked like a dinger--the all-firedest singer that ever wrote rhymes by the page. His harpstrings he pounded with vim till they sounded like strains of a Homeric brand, and people, in wonder, inquired who in thunder was filling with music the land. "At last--now we know it--the world has a poet, who'll set all the rivers afire," in this way we hailed him, when critics assailed him, and knocked on his bargain sale lyre. The years have been flying, and old bards are dying, and some of the young have been called; and Rudyard the rhymer is now an old timer, string-halted and painfully bald. And harder and harder, with counterfeit ardor, he whangs at his lusty old lyre; it's kept caterwauling and wailing and squalling, when it ought to be flung in the fire. O hush up its clangor! In sorrow, not anger, we proffer this little request; let's think of the stripling--the long vanished Kipling, and let the old man take a rest.

_In Indiana_

That Hoosier country's most prolific of folks who scale the heights of fame; excelling in the arts pacific, they give their state a lustrous name. There old Jim Riley writes his verses, and wears, without dispute, the bays; George Ade must pack around six purses to hold the dough he gets for plays. Booth Tarkington is fat and wheezy, from dining on the market's best; he's living on the street called Easy, and gives his faculties a rest. Abe Martin also is a Hoosier, and hands out capsules good to see; and when you take 'em you will lose your suspender buttons in your glee. And Nicholson and many others are writing stuff that hits the spot; O, surely Indiana mothers a most unique and gifted lot! And I've received a little volume, concerning Indiana's crops; it gives the figures, page and column, and rambles on and never stops. It gives the yield of sweet potatoes, and corn and wheat and pigs and eggs, and cabbages and green tomatoes, and sauer kraut packed in wooden kegs. And never once in all the story are any of those writers named; poor Indiana's truest glory is missed--she ought to be ashamed.

_The Colonel at Home_

Oh, Tumbo, Bwana Tumbo, we are glad you're back again, with the lion that you slaughtered in its cheap but useful den; with your crates of anacondas and your sack of crocodiles--we are glad indeed to see you, and the land is wreathed in smiles! For we missed you, Bwana Tumbo, when you roamed the distant field, killing camels with the weapon that no other man could wield; and the rust of peace was on us, and our martial spirits fell, and our lives grew stale and stagnant, and we got too fat to yell. Oh, the land was like a homestead when the boss is gone away, when the women sit and mumble and the kids refuse to play. But you're with us now, B. Tumbo, with the skins of beasts you slew, with the bones of bear and walrus and the stately kangaroo, and the gloom has left the shanty, and we moon around no more, for the colonel's quit his hunting, and his face is at the door!

_The June Bride_

Here she comes, and she's a sight, in her gown of snowy white, thing of beauty and of charm, leaning on her lover's arm! Bright her eyes as summer skies, and a glory in them lies, borrowed from the realms above, where the only light is love. And her lover looks serene, shaven, perfumed, groomed and clean; pride is glowing in his eyes, that he's won so fair a prize. Lover, lover, do your best, ne'er to wound that gentle breast; lover, never bring a smart, to that true and trusting heart! Strive to earn the love you've won, as the years their courses run, knowing ever, as you strive, that no man who is alive, and no man since Adam died, e'er deserved a fair June bride!

_At The Theatre_

I went last night to see the play--a drama of the modern kind; and I am feeling tired today; I'd like to fumigate my mind. I'd hate to always recollect those tawdry jokes and vicious cracks; for I would fain be circumspect, and keep my brain as clean as wax. The playwright did his best to show that married life is flat and stale; that homely virtues are too slow to prosper in this earthly vale; he put Deceit on dress parade, and put a laurel crown on Vice; and Honor saw her trophies fade, and Truth was laid upon the ice. "It held the mirror up to life," and I, who saw it, homeward went, and got a club and beat my wife, and robbed an orphan of a cent. If I saw many plays so rank, so full of dark and evil thought, I'd steal a blind man's savings bank, or swipe a widow's house and lot. You may be lustrous as a star, with all the virtues in you canned, but if you fool around with tar you'll blacken up to beat the band. You may be wholesome as the breeze that chortles through a country lane, but if you eat Limburger cheese, your friends will pass you with disdain. And every time you see a play, or read a book that makes a jest of love and home you throw away some part of you that was the best.

_Club Day Dirge_

Now my wife is reading papers on the Fall of Ancient Rome, and I find myself, her husband, doing all the work at home; I have washed the dinner dishes, I have swept the kitchen floor, and I've pretty near decided that I'll do it never more. For the soap gets in my whiskers and the grease gets on my clothes, and I'm always dropping dishes and big sadirons on my toes; and I cannot herd the children while I'm scrubbing, very well, two have vanished in the distance, three have fallen in the well; and I'm always using coal oil where I should use gasoline, so the stove is blown to pieces, and the roof has holes, I ween. And the neighbors come and chaff me, laugh like horses at the door, as I slop around in sorrow, wiping gravy from the floor. So methinks I'll ask the missus after this to run our home, and I'll do a stunt of reading papers on the Fall of Rome.

_Washington_

Like some lone mountain in the starry night, lifting its head snow-capped, severely white, into the silence of the upper air, serene, remote, and always changeless there! Firm as that mountain in the day of dread, when Freedom wept, and pointed to her dead; grim as that mountain to the ruthless foe, wasting the land that wearied of its woe; strong as that mountain, 'neath his load of care, when brave men faltered in a sick despair. So does his fame, like that lone mountain, rise, cleaving the mists and reaching to the skies; bright as the beams that on its summit glow, firm as its rocks and stainless as its snow!

_Hours and Ponies_

Every hour that's gone's a dead one, and another comes and goes; in the graveyard of the ages hours will find their last repose; and the hour that's come and vanished never can be used again; you may long to live it over, but the longing is in vain. Lasso, then, the hour that's with you, ride it till its back is sore; you can have it sixty minutes--sixty minutes, and no more. Make it earn its board and lodging, make it haul your private wain, for when once it slips its halter it will never work again. So the hours like spotted ponies trot along in single file, and we haven't sense to catch them and to work them for a mile; we just loaf around and watch them, sitting idly in the sun, and the darkness comes and finds us with but mighty little done.

_The Optimist_

We're always glad when he drops in--the pilgrim with the cheerful grin, who won't admit that grief and sin, are in possession; there are so many here below, who coax their briny tears to flow, and talk forevermore of woe, with no digression! The man who takes the cheerful view has friends to burn, and then a few; they like to hear his glad halloo, and loud ki-yoodle; they like to hear him blithely swear that things are right side up with care; they like to hear upon the air, his cock-a-doodle. The Long Felt Want he amply fills; he is a tonic for the ills that can't be reached with liver pills, or porous plasters; he helps to make the desert bloom; he plants the grouches in the tomb; he's here to dissipate the gloom of life's disasters!

_A Few Remarks_

I gaily sought the picnic ground, where children sported in the shade; with them I frolicked round and round, and drank with them red lemonade; and life seemed very full and sweet, as joyous as the song of larks, until a guy got on his feet, and said he'd make a few remarks. I journeyed to the county fair, to view the products of the farm; I marveled at the pumpkins there, and carrots longer than your arm; and happiness was over all, there was no sign of care that carks, until a man, with lots of gall, got up to make a few remarks. Oh, I was born for joy and glee, to sing as blithely as the birds! My life, that should so sunny be, is darkened by a cloud of words; and when my prospects seem most fair, and trouble for its bourne embarks, some Windy Jim is always there, to rise and make a few remarks.

_Little Things_

Little drops of water poured into the milk, give the milkman's daughters lovely gowns of silk. Little grains of sugar, mingled with the sand, make the grocer's assets swell to beat the band. Little bowls of custard, humble though they seem, help enrich the fellow selling pure ice cream. Little rocks and boulders, little chunks of slate, make the coal man's fortune something fierce and great. Little ads, well written, printed nice and neat, give the joyful merchants homes on Easy Street.

_The Umpire_

When the home team loses a well fought game, it causes a lot of woe, but nothing is ever gained, my friends, by laying the umpire low; far better to let him fade away, and die of his soul's remorse, than to muss the diamond with his remains, or sit on his pulseless corpse. When I was younger I always slew the umpire whose work was bum, and now when I go to my downy couch, the ghosts of the umpires come, and moan and gibber around my bed and rattle their fleshless bones, and call me names of the rankest kind, in their deep, sepulchral tones. I always found, when an umpire died, and rode in the village hearse, that the fellow who came to take his place was sure to be ten times worse.

_Sherlock Holmes_

The Great Detective had returned; he'd been some years away, and I supposed that he was dead, and sleeping 'neath the clay. Ah, ne'er shall I forget the joy it gave me thus to greet the king of all detectives in my rooms in Baker street! "I notice, Watson," Sherlock said, with smile serene and wide, "that since I left you, months ago, you've found yourself a bride." I had not spoken of the fact, so how did Sherlock know? I tumbled from my rockingchair, his knowledge jarred me so. "It's easy, Watson," said the sleuth; "deduction makes it plain; you ate an egg for breakfast and your chin still wears the stain; you haven't shaved for half a week--the stubble's growing blue--your pants are baggy at the knees, your necktie's on askew; your vest is buttoned crooked and your shirt is out of plumb; your hat has been in contact with a wad of chewing gum. You were something of a dandy in the good old days of yore--pass the dope, my dearest Watson; what's the use of saying more?"

_The Sanctuary_

I do not like the man who searches his mind for caustic things to say, about the preachers and the churches; he grows more common every day. The cynic is a scurvy tutor, whose head and creed are made of wood; he puts up little gods of pewter, and says that they "are just as good." He thinks that triumphs he is winning, and he emits a joyous laugh, if he can knock the underpinning from Faith, that is our rod and staff. He is a poor and tawdry victor, who would o'er dead religions walk; the church still lives, though fools have kicked her, since first she builded on a rock. I hear the mellow church bells ringing a welcome to that calm retreat; I hear the choir's sweet voices singing an anthem, reverent and sweet. And well I know the gentle pastor is pointing out the path to wend, and urging men to let the Master be evermore their guide and friend. And he, like all good men, is reaching for better, and for higher things; and so the message of his preaching--unlike the cynic's--comfort brings.

_The Newspaper Graveyard_

Beneath the stones they sweetly sleep, the humble toilers of the press, no more to sorrow or to weep, no more to labor in distress. Here lies a youth upon whose tomb the tear of pity often drops; we had to send him to his doom, because he wrote of "bumper crops." Here sleeps the golden years away the fairest of the human tribe; we slew him at the break of day, because he called himself "ye scribe." Beneath that yew another sleeps, who did his work with smiling lips; we had to put him out for keeps when he referred to "flying trips." And one, the noblest of them all, is resting on the windswept hill; in writing up a game of ball, he spoke of one who "hit the pill." Hard by the wall, where roses bloom, and breezes sway the clinging vines, that youth is sleeping in his tomb, who used the phrase, "along these lines." Today the sexton wields his spade, and digs a grave both deep and wide, where soon the stripling will be laid, who wrote about "the blushing bride."

_My Lady's Hair_

She walks in beauty like the night, as some romantic singer said; her eyes give forth a starry light, her lips are of a cherry red; across the floor she seems to float; she seems to me beyond compare, a being perfect--till I note the way that she's done up her hair. She must have toiled a half a day to build that large, unwieldy mass; she must have used a bale of hay, and strips of tin, and wire of brass; her sisters must have helped to braid, her mother wrought and tinkered there, and butler, cook and chambermaid, all helped to wrestle with her hair. And after all the grinding toil, and all the braiding and the fuss, the one effect is just to spoil her beauty, and make people cuss. She walks in beauty like the night where nights are most serenely fair; but, J. H. Caesar! she's a sight, when she's got on her Sunday hair!

_The Sick Minstrel_