Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

conclusion from you as to ‘Yankee Doodle.’ It seems to me to be the work of a great poet and prophet.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sam.

“Let us consider it seriously,” said Chung Tu. “Have you a copy of it?”

“No,” said Sam, laughing.

“Then please repeat it for us, and I will write it down.”

Sam began to recite, but he found it difficult to keep his face straight:

“ ‘Yankee Doodle went to town,
Riding on a pony.
He stuck a feather in his crown
And called him macaroni.’ ”

“That is not like my version,” said the attaché, pulling a piece of paper from the pocket of his silk jacket. “Here is mine,” and he read it solemnly and with emphasis:

“ ‘Yankee Doodle came to town,
A-riding on a pony.
He stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.’

“Which reading is correct?” he asked of Cleary.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Cleary, laughing.

“How careless you are of your country’s literature! In Porsslania we would carefully guard the sayings of our ancestors and preserve them from alteration. You have what you call the ‘higher criticism.’ You should direct it to the correction of this most important poem. I have studied the matter as carefully and accurately as a foreigner can, and I am satisfied that my version is the most authentic. Come now, let us study it. Take the first two lines:

“ ‘Yankee Doodle came to town
A-riding on a pony.’

“There is nothing difficult in that. You may say that the name is a strange one, and I admit that ‘Doodle’ is a curious surname, but ‘Yang Kee’ is a perfectly reasonable one from a Porsslanese point of view, and leads me to suppose that the wisdom contained in this poem came originally from our wise men. Perhaps the name is put there as an indication of the fact. However, let us accept the name. The hero came to town riding on a pony. That was a very sensible thing to do. Remember that those lines were written long before the discovery of railways or tramcars or bicycles or automobiles. You may say that he might have taken a carriage or one of your buggies, but you forget that the roads were exceedingly bad in those days, as bad as our roads near the Imperial City, and it would have been dangerous perhaps to attempt the journey in a vehicle of any kind. In riding to town on a pony, then, he was acting like a rational man. But let us read the rest of the verse:

“ ‘He stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.’

“For some reason or other which is not revealed, he puts a feather in his cap, and immediately he begins to act irrationally and to use language so absurd that the reading itself has become doubtful. What is the meaning of this? A man whose conduct has always been reasonable and unexceptionable, suddenly adopts the language of a lunatic. What does it mean? You have sung this verse for a century and more, and you have never taken the trouble to seek for the meaning.”

Sam and Cleary did not attempt to defend their neglect.

“It is clear to me,” proceeded the philosopher, “it is very clear to me that it is an allegory. What is the feather which he puts in his cap? It is the most conspicuous feature of the military uniform, the plume, the pompon, which marks all kinds of military dress-hats. When he speaks of his hero as having assumed the feather, he means that he has donned the uniform of a soldier. He has come to town, in other words, to enlist. Then behold the transformation! He begins at once to act irrationally. The whole epic paints in never-fading colors the disastrous effect upon the intellect of putting on soldier-clothes. You will pardon me, my friends, if I speak thus plainly, but I must open to you the hidden wisdom of your own country.”

Sam smiled. The idea of taking offense at any nonsense which an ignorant pagan should say was quite beneath him.

“But that is not all. The style of the language and of the music is most noteworthy. It is highly comical, and its object evidently is to provoke a laugh, and at dinner this evening we saw that its object was attained. All the other martial hymns to which we listened were grave, ponderous compositions from which the element of humor was rigidly excluded. It was left for the author of ‘Yang Kee’ to uncover the ludicrous character of militarism⁠—he has virtually committed your nation to it. He was a genius of marvelous insight. He saw clearly then what but few of your fellow citizens are even now aware of, that there is nothing more comical than a soldier. I am convinced that he was a Porsslanese who had the good fortune to sow in your literature the seed of truth. You think that as a nation you have a sense of humor. I have studied your humorous literature. You laugh at mothers-in-law and messenger-boys and domestic servants, and many other objects which are altogether serious and have no element of humor in them, and at the same time you are blind to the most absurd of spectacles, the man who dresses up in feathers and gold lace and thinks it is honorable to do nothing for years but wait for a pretext to kill somebody,” and Chung Tu leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“It is we who have the sense of humor,” he added. “When our common people laughed at the Emperor in his uniforms, they showed the same sound sense that appears in ‘Yang Kee.’ I thank you, my dear friends, for listening to me so kindly and without anger, but I hope to preach these ideas to your people, and as I take my text from your national hymn, they must listen to me. Then there is another common expression among you which shows, as