The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.), Marshall P. Wilder [best books to read in your 20s txt] 📗
- Author: Marshall P. Wilder
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"The identical thing," said the Itinerant Tinker. Whereupon he walked over to it and immediately began sawing a thin slab from off its smooth end.
"Now," said he, after he had finished the rather difficult task, oiled his saw and returned it to his kit, "I proceed to write the word love in the infinitive mood."
"Is that a sad mood?" asked Dickey. "It sounds very much like it, I think."[Pg 79]
Without heeding the question in the least the Itinerant Tinker turned the slab for Dickey's inspection, and he read on it the two words, to love. Taking up a wedge the Itinerant Tinker printed the word dearly on the flat side of it, and then skilfully drove it between the words to and love. When he again held it up for Dickey to see, it read: to dearly love.
"There!" exclaimed the Itinerant Tinker, holding the slab proudly at arm's length and turning his head slowly from side to side, "that's what I call a fine bit of ingenuity!"
"So that's a split infinitive, is it?" Dickey asked.
"Why, you stupid boy!" the Itinerant Tinker exclaimed; "didn't you just this minute see me split it?"
"Yes, sir; I did," Dickey murmured rather shamefacedly.
"Then, if I split it, what else could it be but a split infinitive, I'd like to know?"
"Well," said Dickey, a bit timidly, "I never heard a block of wood called an infinitive before."
"Oh, my!" sighed the Itinerant Tinker, as he sank down on his pile of merchandise. "How you do weary me!"
He sat looking at the slab of wood for such a long time, turning it admiringly now that way, now this, that poor Dickey began to grow quite nervous.
"Please," he ventured at last, "won't you show me now how you mend it?" Dickey didn't care in the least to see it done, but he imagined that by asking the question he would regain the good will of the old man.
"There you go again! There you go!" ex[Pg 80]claimed the Itinerant Tinker. He actually shed a tear. "I knew you'd do it—I knew it!"
"Now what have I done?" asked Dickey, innocently.
"You've broken the silence," said the Itinerant Tinker, sadly. "It'll take me hours and hours to glue that together. But first," he went on, after another long pause, "I'll show you how neatly this split infinitive can be mended."
Thereupon he withdrew the wedge, dipped a brush into a pot of glue, and, after distributing the sticky fluid over the split sides, brought them carefully and neatly together.
"There!" he exclaimed, triumphantly, "that's the proper way to bring together a split infinitive. Beware, my boy, of splitting your infinitives; but if you do, call on the Itinerant Tinker and he'll straighten 'em out for you."
"Before we move along," he resumed, after he had loaded himself with his merchandise, "perhaps you'd like to listen to a story?"
"I should, if it wasn't about split infinitives," replied Dickey, doubtfully. "They really make me quite dizzy."
"Well, it's not," said the Itinerant Tinker, smiling vaguely. "It's the story of the
PEDANTIC PEDAGOGUEOutside the school-house door,
It was a dismal afternoon;
The hour was half-past four.
His voice came through the fog:
'I have forgotten it, kind sir,
But I'm a Pedagogue.[Pg 81]
I put my clothes to bed
And hang myself upon a chair;
Is not that odd?' he said.
I climb into my tub;
Then wonder why I'm sitting there.
Ah, me, man! that's the rub!'
'Kind sir, observe this frog.
I took him in this net, when he
Was but a pollywog.
The seismocosmic state;
And why this strange amphibian
Should slowly gravitate
To—' 'Say!' I cried, 'please wait!
I can not understand a word
Of that which you relate.'
'The sum of the equation
Between the harp and hippogriff;
Define their true relation.'
'Because I'm but a tinker.
But I can mend your old umbrel';
'Twill be a dime, I think, sir.'
And swam out to the fence,
Which was an easy thing to do—
The vapor was so dense.
It was a sight to see
The way he made grimaces at
The Pedagogue and me.
A frog so impolite[Pg 82]
I flung a gnarly stick at him—
Flung it with all my might.
As softly as a feather;
The frog jumped on and sailed away,
Leaving us there together
Till they were sore and numb.
The bull-frog merely blinked at us,
And sang: 'You'll drown! Bottle-o'-Rum!'
A-sitting in the wet.
He was so absent-minded, I
Dare say he's sitting yet—
Revolving in his mind
The definite relation 'twixt
The cosmos and mankind."
When the Itinerant Tinker had finished his story he rose wearily to his feet.
"If we don't hurry along," he said, "I doubt whether we shall reach the Crypt in time to take our tea. I never—"
He was interrupted at this point by a shrill voice, coming, it seemed, from the direction of the forest.
"Jingle-junk! jingle-junk! jingle-junk!" shouted the penetrating voice.
The Itinerant Tinker stopped instantly. An angry frown gathered on his brow.
"I know who that is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch him for seventy-two years, and if I do, I'll—"
Dickey never heard the end of the sentence for the Itinerant Tinker made for the wood at a sur[Pg 83]prisingly swift gait. The incident had its really amusing side, too; for he left behind him a trail of pots, pans, boilers, stove-lids, potato-mashers—in fact, Dickey thought, he must have dropped almost all of his "necessary commodities" by the time he had vanished into the wood.[Pg 84]
THE STRIKE OF ONE By Elliott FlowerDanny Burke was discharged.
A certain distinguished ex-President of the United States probably would have said that he was discharged for "pernicious activity"; but the head of the branch messenger-office merely said that he was "an infernal nuisance."
Danny was a good union man. As a matter of fact, he was a boy, and a small boy at that; but he would have scorned any description that did not put him down as "a good union man." Danny's environment had been one of uncompromising unionism, and that was what ailed him. He wanted to advance the union idea. To this end, he undertook to organize the other messengers in the branch office, advancing all the arguments that he had heard his mother and his father use in their discussions. The boys thought favorably of the scheme, but most of them were inclined to let some one else do the experimenting. It might result disastrously. Just to encourage them, Danny became insolent, as he had already become inattentive; he told the manager what he would do and what he would not do, and positively declined to deliver a message that would carry his work a few minutes beyond quitting-time.
Then Danny was discharged—and he laughed.[Pg 85] Discharge him! Well, he'd show them a thing or two.
"We'll arbitrate," he announced.
"Get out!" ordered the manager.
"You got to arbitrate," insisted Danny. "You got to confer with your men or you're goin' to have a strike!" Danny had heard so much about conferences that he felt he was on safe ground now. "We can't stand fer no autycrats!" he added. "You got to meet your men fair an' talk it over. A committee—"
"Get out!" repeated the manager, rising from his desk, near which the waiting boys were seated.
"Men," yelled Danny, "I calls a strike an' a boycott!"
Two of the boys rose as if to follow him, but the manager was too quick. He had Danny by the collar before Danny knew what had happened, and the struggling boy was marched to the door and pushed out. The boys who had risen promptly subsided.
Danny was too astonished for words. In all his extended hearsay knowledge of strikes he never had heard of anything like this. There was nothing heroic in it at all. He had expected a conference, and, instead, he was ignominiously handled and thrust into the street.
Danny sat down on a pile of paving-stones to think it over. Without reasoning the matter out, he now regarded himself as a union. The other members had deserted him, but he was on a strike; and somehow he had absorbed the idea that the men who were striking were always the union men. So, this being a strike of one, he was an entire union. It did not take him long[Pg 86] to decide that the first thing to do was to "picket the plant." That was a familiar phrase, and he knew the meaning of it. Everything was nicely arranged for him, too. The street was being paved, and he was sitting on some paving-stones, with a pile of gravel beside him. He selected fifteen or twenty of the largest stones from the gravel-pile.
A woman was the first victim. As she was about to enter the messenger-office she was startled by a yell of warning from Danny.
"Hey, you!" he shouted. "Keep out!"
She backed away hastily, and looked up to see if anything were about to fall on her.
"Why should I keep out?" she asked at last.
"'Cause you'll git hit with a rock if you don't," was the prompt reply.
"But, little boy—" she began.
"I ain't a little boy," asserted Danny. "I'm a union."
The woman looked puzzled, but she finally decided that this was some boyish joke.
"You'd better run home," she said, and turned to enter the messenger-office. She could not refrain from looking over her shoulder, however, and she saw that he was poised for a throw.
"Don't do that!" she cried hastily. "You might hurt me."
"Sure I'll hurt you," was the reply. "I'll smash your block in if you don't git a move on."
The woman decided to look for another messenger-office, and Danny, triumphant, resumed his seat on the paving-stones.
Then came another messenger, returning from a trip.
"What's the matter, Danny?" he asked.[Pg 87]
"Got the plant picketed," asserted Danny. "Nobody can't go in or come out."
"I'm goin' in," said the other boy.
"You!" exclaimed Danny scornfully, as he suddenly caught the boy and swung him over on to the stones.
"No, I ain't, Danny," the boy hastened to say, for Danny gave every evidence of an intent to batter in his face.
"Sure?" asked Danny.
"Honest."
"This here's a strike," explained Danny.
"Oh, I didn't know that," apologized the boy. "I ain't a strike-breaker."
Danny let him up, but made him sit on another pile of stones a short distance away. He would be all right as long as he kept still, Danny explained, but no longer.
While Danny was continuing strike operations with rapidly growing enthusiasm, the woman he had first stopped was taking an unexpected part in the little comedy. She had gone to another of the branch offices with the message she wished delivered, and had told of the trouble she had experienced. Thereupon the manager of this office called up the manager of the other on the telephone.
"What's the matter over there?" he asked.
"Nothing," was the surprised reply. "Who said there was?"
"Why, a woman has just reported that she was driven away by a boy with a pile of stones."
The manager hastened to the window, and realized at once that something was decidedly wrong. On a pile of paving-stones directly in front of the door sat the proud and happy Danny.[Pg 88] At his feet there was a pile of smaller stones, and he
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