[2]Editor's Note: It is very interesting to find this story in the Memoirs of Methuselah owing to its marked resemblance to an anecdote related of General Washington, in which the youthful father of his country is represented as having acted in a like manner upon a later occasion.
[2]Editor's Note: It is very interesting to find this story in the Memoirs of Methuselah owing to its marked resemblance to an anecdote related of General Washington, in which the youthful father of his country is represented as having acted in a like manner upon a later occasion.
I realize, however, that in writing one's memoirs one should not withhold the truth if there is to be any justification in the eyes of posterity for their existence, so I am not going to conceal anything from my readers that has any important bearing upon my character. Let me therefore admit here and now, apropos of the charming lines with which my last chapter was brought to a close, that I have myself at times written poetry. It is the lamentable fact that in this day and generation poets are not held in that high esteem which is their due. We have unfortunately had a number of them in thisvicinity of late years who have not been any too particular about paying their board bills, and whether their troth has been plighted to our confiding maidens, or to our trustful tailors, the result has been the same—they have not been conspicuously present at the date of maturity of their promises. One very distinguished looking old gentleman in particular, who registered from Greece, came here several centuries ago and secured five hundred subscriptions to his book of verses, collected the first instalment, and then faded from the scene and neither he nor his verses have been heard from since. The consequence has been that when any of the young of this community show the slightest signs of poetic genius their parents behave as though the measles had broken out in the family, and do all they can spiritually and physically to stamp out the symptoms. My cousin Aminidabindeed went so far while he was in the Legislature here, to introduce a bill making the writing of poetry a misdemeanor, and ordering the police immediately to arrest all persons caught giving way in public or private to an inspiration. The bill only failed to become a law by the expiration of the session before it had reached its final reading. It may be readily imagined, therefore, why until this I have never acknowledged my own proneness to expressing myself in verse. Only two or three of my most intimate friends have been aware of the tendency, and they have been so ashamed of it that as my friends they have sought rather to suppress than to spread the report.
I quite remember the consternation with which my first effort was received in the family. Father Adam had been reminiscing about the Garden Days, and he had made the remark that when someof the animals came up to be christened they were such extraordinary looking creatures he was afraid they were imaginary.
"Take the Ornithorhyncus, for instance," he said, "and the Discosaurus Carnegii—why, when they came ambling up for their tickets I could hardly believe my eyes, and I turned to Eve and asked her with real anxiety, whether or not she saw anything, and, of course, her answer reassured me, but for a minute I was afraid that the grape-juice we had had for lunch was up to its old tricks."
This anecdote amused me tremendously, for I had myself thought the Discosaurus about the funniest looking beast except the shad, I had ever seen, and I promptly constructed a limerick which I handed over to my father. It ran this way:
There was an old fellow named Adam,Who lived in the Garden with Madam.When the critters they cameAll demanding a nameHe thought for a minute he "had 'em!"
There was an old fellow named Adam,Who lived in the Garden with Madam.When the critters they cameAll demanding a nameHe thought for a minute he "had 'em!"
I don't think I shall ever forget the result of my father's horrified reading of the lines. All my grandfathers back to Adam himself were there, and wrath, fear, and consternation were depicted on every countenance when the last line was delivered, and then every eye was turned on me. If there had been any way of disappearing I should have faded away instantly, but alas, every avenue of escape was closed, and before I left the room each separate and distinct ancestor had turned me over his knee and lambasted me to his heart's content. In spite of all this discipline, which one would have thought effective enough to take me out of the listsof Parnassus forever, it on the contrary served only to whet my thirst for writing, and from that time until now I have never gotten over my desire to chisel out sonnets, triolets, rondeaux and lyrics of one kind or another.
One little piece that I recall had to do with the frequency with which I was punished for small delinquencies. It was called
My Father larruped me, and yetI could but note his eyes were wet,When lying there across his kneeI got what he had had for me—It seemed to fill him with regret."It hurt me worse than you," he said,When later on I went to bed,And I—the truth would not be hid—Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"
My Father larruped me, and yetI could but note his eyes were wet,When lying there across his kneeI got what he had had for me—It seemed to fill him with regret.
"It hurt me worse than you," he said,When later on I went to bed,And I—the truth would not be hid—Replied, "I'm gug-gug-glad it did!"
There were other verses written as I grew older that, while I do not regard them as masterpieces, I nevertheless think compare favorably with a great deal of the alleged poetry that has crept into print of late years. A trifle dashed off on a brick with a piece of charcoal one morning shortly after my hundredth birthday, comes back to me. The original I regret to say was lost through the careless act of one of my cousins, who flung it at a pterodactyl as it winged its flight across our meadows some years after. I reproduce it from memory.
The merry, merry June-bugNow butts at all in sight.He butts the wall o' mornings,He rams the ceil at night.He caroms from the book-caseOff to the window-pane,Then bounces from my tableBack to the case again.He whacks against the door-jambAnd tumbles on the mat;Then on the grand-pianoHe strikes a strident flat;Then to the oaken stair-caseHe blindly flops and jumps,And on the steps for hoursHe blithely bumps the bumps.They say that he is foolish,And has no brains. No doubt'Tis well for if he had 'emHe'd surely butt them out.
The merry, merry June-bugNow butts at all in sight.He butts the wall o' mornings,He rams the ceil at night.
He caroms from the book-caseOff to the window-pane,Then bounces from my tableBack to the case again.
He whacks against the door-jambAnd tumbles on the mat;Then on the grand-pianoHe strikes a strident flat;
Then to the oaken stair-caseHe blindly flops and jumps,And on the steps for hoursHe blithely bumps the bumps.
They say that he is foolish,And has no brains. No doubt'Tis well for if he had 'emHe'd surely butt them out.
As I say, this is mere a trifle, but it is none the less beautifully descriptive of a creature that has always seemed to me to be worthy of more attention than he has ever received from the poets of our age. I have been unable to find in the literature of Greece, Egypt or the Orient, any reference to this wonderful insect who embodies in his frail physique so much of the truest philosophy of life, and who, despite the obstacles that seem so persistently to obstruct his path, buzzes blithely ever onward, singing his lovely song and uttering no complaints.
Noah brings disgrace upon the family.Noah brings disgrace upon the family.
In the line of what I may call calendar poetry, which has always been popular since the art of rhyming began, none of the months escaped my attention, but of all of my efforts in that direction I never wrote anything that excelled in descriptive beauty my
Hail to thee, O Februeer!It is sweet to have you here,Lemon-time of all the year!Making all our noses gayWith the influenziay;Flinging sneezes here and yon,Rich and poor alike upon;Clogging up the bronchial tubesOf the Urbans and the Roobs;Opening for all your gripWith its lavish stores of pip;Scattering along your routeLittle gifts of Epizoot;Time of slush and time of thaw,Time of hours mild and raw;Blowing cold and blowing hot;Stable as a Hottentot;Coaxing flowers from the closeJust to nip them on the nose;Calling birdies from their nestsFor to freeze their little chests;Springtime in the morning bright,With a blizzard on at night;Chills and fever through the dayLike a sort of pousse café;Time of drift and time of slosh!Season of the ripe golosh;Running rivers in the street,Frozen toes, and soaking feet;Take this wreath of PoesieDedicated unto thee,Undiluted stream of mushTo the Merry Month of Slush!
Hail to thee, O Februeer!It is sweet to have you here,Lemon-time of all the year!Making all our noses gayWith the influenziay;Flinging sneezes here and yon,Rich and poor alike upon;Clogging up the bronchial tubesOf the Urbans and the Roobs;Opening for all your gripWith its lavish stores of pip;Scattering along your routeLittle gifts of Epizoot;Time of slush and time of thaw,Time of hours mild and raw;Blowing cold and blowing hot;Stable as a Hottentot;Coaxing flowers from the closeJust to nip them on the nose;Calling birdies from their nestsFor to freeze their little chests;Springtime in the morning bright,With a blizzard on at night;Chills and fever through the dayLike a sort of pousse café;Time of drift and time of slosh!Season of the ripe golosh;Running rivers in the street,Frozen toes, and soaking feet;Take this wreath of PoesieDedicated unto thee,Undiluted stream of mushTo the Merry Month of Slush!
I preferred always, of course, to be original, not only in the matter of my thought, but in the manner of my expression as well, but like all the rest of the poetizing tribe, I sooner or later came under the Greek influence. This is shown most notably in a little bit written one verywarm day in midsummer, back in my 278th year. It was entitled
I don't wish to flout you, Pan.Tried to write about you, Pan.Tried to tell the story, Pan,Of your wondrous glory, Pan;But I can't begin it, Pan,For this very minute, Pan,All my thoughts are tumid, Pan,'Tis so hot and humid, Pan,And for all my trying, Pan,There is no denying, Pan,I can't think, poor sighing Pan,Of you save as frying, Pan.
I don't wish to flout you, Pan.Tried to write about you, Pan.Tried to tell the story, Pan,Of your wondrous glory, Pan;But I can't begin it, Pan,For this very minute, Pan,All my thoughts are tumid, Pan,'Tis so hot and humid, Pan,And for all my trying, Pan,There is no denying, Pan,I can't think, poor sighing Pan,Of you save as frying, Pan.
It was after reading the above, when it dropped out of my coat pocket during one of our visits to the wood-shed, that Adamexpressed the profound conviction that I was born to be hanged, but as I have already intimated, neither his sense of justice, nor his sense of humor was notable.
Once in awhile I tried a bit of satire, and when my son Noah first began to show signs of mental aberration on the subject of a probable flood that would sweep everything before it, and put the whole world out of business save those who would take shares in his International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, I endeavored to dissuade him in every possible way from so suspicious an enterprise. Failing to impress my feelings upon him in one way, I fell back upon an anonymously published poem, which I hoped would bring him to his senses. The lines were printed in red chalk on the board fence surrounding his Ship-Yard, and ran as follows:
O Noah he built himself a boat,And filled it full of animiles.He took along a billie-goat,A pug and two old crocodiles.A pair of very handsome yaksA leopard and hyenas two;A brace of tender canvas-backs,A camel and a kangaroo.A pair of guinea-pigs were placedIn state-rooms off the main saloon,Along with several rabbits chaste,A 'possum and a gray raccoon.Now all went well upon that cruise,And they were happy as could be,Until one morning came the newsThat filled old Noah with misery.Those guinea-pigs—O what a tide!—Were versed in plain Arithmetic;The way they upped and multipliedMade Captain Noah mighty sick.And four days out he turned about,And made back to the pier once moreTo rid himself of all that rout,And put the guinea-pigs ashore.And where there were but two of theseWhen starting on that famous trip,When they got back from off the seas,Three hundred thousand left the ship!
O Noah he built himself a boat,And filled it full of animiles.He took along a billie-goat,A pug and two old crocodiles.
A pair of very handsome yaksA leopard and hyenas two;A brace of tender canvas-backs,A camel and a kangaroo.
A pair of guinea-pigs were placedIn state-rooms off the main saloon,Along with several rabbits chaste,A 'possum and a gray raccoon.
Now all went well upon that cruise,And they were happy as could be,Until one morning came the newsThat filled old Noah with misery.
Those guinea-pigs—O what a tide!—Were versed in plain Arithmetic;The way they upped and multipliedMade Captain Noah mighty sick.
And four days out he turned about,And made back to the pier once moreTo rid himself of all that rout,And put the guinea-pigs ashore.
And where there were but two of theseWhen starting on that famous trip,When they got back from off the seas,Three hundred thousand left the ship!
Poor Noah! He took this publication so much to heart that he offered a reward of a thousand dollars, and a first-class passage on his cruise to the top of Mount Ararat to any one who could give him the name of the miscreant who had written the lines, but he has never yet found outwho did them, and until he reads these memoirs after I have passed away, he will never know from how near home they came.
Finally let me say that in a more serious vein as a Poet I was not wanting in success—that is in my own judgment. As a mystic poet nothing better than the following came from my pen:
O arching trees that mark the zenith hour,How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power,So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund giftsOn mortal ways, in superhuman shiftsThat overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man,As would the details of some awful plan,Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withalEnmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pallEnvelops all the seas at eventide, and bringsNew meaning to the song the Robin singsWhen from her nest matutinal she squirmsAnd hies her forth for adolescent wormsWith which her young to feed, yet all the timeWith heart and soul laments my dulcet rhyme!
O arching trees that mark the zenith hour,How great thy reach, how marvellous thy power,So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund giftsOn mortal ways, in superhuman shiftsThat overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man,As would the details of some awful plan,Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withalEnmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pallEnvelops all the seas at eventide, and bringsNew meaning to the song the Robin singsWhen from her nest matutinal she squirmsAnd hies her forth for adolescent wormsWith which her young to feed, yet all the timeWith heart and soul laments my dulcet rhyme!
Of this I was naturally quite proud, and when under the title of "Maternity" I read it once in secret to my Aunt Jerusha, she burst into tears as I went on, and three days later read it as a New Thought gem before the Enochsville Society of Ethical Culture. It was there pronounced a great piece of symbolic imagery, and prediction was made that some day in some more advanced age than our own, a Magazine would be found somewhere that would print it. This may be so, but I fear I shall not live to see it.
I have never yet been quite able to make up my mind with any degree of definiteness in regard to the sanity of my son Noah. In many respects he is a fine fellow. His moral character is beyond reproach, and I have never caught him in any kind of a wilful deception such as many parents bewail in their offspring, and I know that he has no bad habits. He has no liking for cigarette smoking, and he keeps good company and good hours. His sons Shem, Ham and Japhet, are great favorites with all of us, and as far as mere respectability goes there is no familyin the land that stands higher than his, but the complete obsession of his mind by this International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company of his is entirely beyond my comprehension, and his attempts to explain it to me are futile, because its utter impracticability, and the reasons advanced for its use seem so absurd that I lose my temper before he gets half way through the first page of his prospectus. From his boyhood up he has been fond of the water, and when the bath-tub was first invented we did not have to drive him to it, as most parents have to do with most boys, but on the contrary we had all we could do to keep him away from it. I don't think any one in my household for five hundred years was able to take a bath on any night of the week without first having to clear away from the tub the evidence of Noah's interest in marine matters. Nothing in the world seemed to delight his spirit more as a child than to fill the tub full of water, turn on the shower at its fullest speed, and play what he called flood in it, with a shingle or a chip, or if he could not find either of these, with a floating leaf. Many a time I have found him long after he was supposed to have gone to bed sitting on the bath-room floor singing a roysterous nautical song like "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep," or "A Life On the Ocean Wave," while he pushed a floating soap dish filled with ants, spiders and lady-bugs up and down that overflowing tub; and later in his life, when more manly sports would seem to be more to any one's tastes, while his playmates were out in the open chasing the Discosaurus over the hills, or trapping Pterodactyls in the bull-rushes, he would go off by himself into the woods where he had erected what he called his ship-yard, and whittle out gondolas, canoes, battle-ships, arks and other marine craft day in and day out until one could hardly walk in the dark without stubbing his toe on some kind of a boat. I recall once coming upon him on the farther slopes of Mount Ararat, putting the finishing touches to as graceful a cat-boat as any one ever saw—a thing that would have excited the envy of mariners in all parts of the world, but in spite of my admiration for his handicraft, it worried me more than I can say when I thought of all the labor he had expended on such a work miles away from any kind of a water course. It did not seem to square with my ideas as to what constituted sense.
"It is very beautiful, my son," I observed, after inspecting the vessel carefully for a few moments. "Her lines are perfect, and the model indicates that she will prove a speedy proposition, but it seems to me that you have left out one ofthe most important features of a permanently successful sailing vessel."
Noah looked at me patronizingly, and shrugged his shoulders as much as to inquire what on earth I knew about boat-building.
"If you refer either to the bowsprit or to the flying balloon-jib," he replied coldly, and acting generally as if he were very much bored, "you are entirely wrong. This isn't a sloop, or a catamaran, or a caravel. Neither is it a government transport, an ocean gray-hound, or a ram. It's just a cat-boat, nothing more."
"No," said I. "I refer to nothing of the sort. I don't know much about boats, but I know enough to be aware without your telling me, that this affair is not a battle-ship, tug, collier, brig, lugger, barge or gravy-boat. Neither is it a dhow, gig or skiff. But that does not affect the validity of my criticism that youhave forgotten an important factor in her successful use as a sailing craft."
"What is it?" he demanded, curtly.
"An ocean," said I. "How the dickens do you expect to sail a boat like that off here in the woods, where there isn't enough water to float a parlor-match?"
He laughed quietly as I advanced this objection, and for the first time in his life gave evidence of the haunting idea that later took complete possession of his mind.
"Time enough for that," said he. "There'll be more ocean around here some day than you can keep off with a million umbrellas, and don't you forget it."
Somehow or other his reply irritated me. The idea seemed so preposterously absurd. How on earth he ever expected to get an ocean out there, half way up the summit of our highest mountain, no sane person could imagine, and I turned the vials of my wrathful satire upon him.
"You ought to start a Ferry Company from the Desert of Sahara to the top of Mount Ararat," I observed, as dryly as I knew how.
"The notion is not new," he replied instantly. "I have already given the matter some thought, and it isn't impossible that the thing will be done before I get through. There will be a demand for such a thing all right some day, but whether it will be a permanent demand is the question."
It may interest the public to know that it was at this period that I invented a term that has since crept into the language as a permanent figure of speech. Speaking to my wife on the subject of the day's adventure that very evening, after I had expressed my determination to apply for the appointment of a Commission De Lunatico Enquirendo on Noah's behalf, she endeavored to quiet my anxiety on the score of his good sense by saying:
"Don't worry, dear. He is very serious in this matter. He has always had a great storm in his mind ever since he was a baby."
"I guess it's a brain-storm," I interjected contemptuously, for I could not then, and I cannot now conceive of any kind of a shower that will make the boy's habit of building caravels in the middle of ten-acre lots, and submarines on fifteen-by-twenty fish ponds, and schooner yachts on mill-dams only three feet deep at high tide a reasonable bit of procedure.
Occasionally one of my neighbors would call upon me to remark somewhat critically on this strange predilection of my son, and several of them advised me to take the matter seriously in hand before it was too late.
"If you lived on the seaboard, it wouldbe a fine thing to have such a son," they said, "but off here in the lumber district it would be far more to the point if he went in for the breeding of camels, or some other useful vehicle of transportation, instead of constructing ferry-boats that never can be launched, and building arks in a spot where the nearest approach to an ocean is a leak in the horse-trough."
I could not but admit that there was justice in these criticisms, but when it came to the point I never felt that I could justify myself in interfering with the boy's hobby until it was too late, and the lad having passed his three hundredth birthday, was no longer subject to parental discipline. I reasoned it out that after all it was better that he should be building dories and canal-boats out under the apple trees, and having what he called "a caulking good time," in an innocent way, than spending his time running up and downthe Great White Way, between supper-time and breakfast, making night hideous with riotous songs, as many youths of his own age were doing; and when our family physician once tried to get him to join a football eleven at the Enochsville High School in order to get this obsession of a deluge out of his mind, I was not a little impressed by the impertinent pertinence of his ready answer.
"No rush-line for mine, Doctor," he said, firmly. "I'd rather have water on the brain than on the knee."
I had hoped that as the years passed on he would outgrow not only his conviction of the imminence of a disastrous deluge by which the world would be overwhelmed, and the predilection for nautical construction that the belief had bred in him, but alas for all human expectation, it grew upon him, instead of waning, as I had hoped. Our prosperous farm was givenover entirely to the demands of his ship-yard, and when his sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet came along he directed all their education along lines of seamanship. He fed them even in their tender years upon hard-tack and grog. Up to the time when they were two hundred years old he made them sleep in their cradles, which he kept rocking continuously so that they would get used to the motion, and would be able to go to sea when the time came without suffering from sea-sickness. All clocks were thrust bodily out of his house, and if anybody ever stopped at the farm to inquire the time of day he was informed that it was "twenty minutes past six bells," or "nineteen minutes of three bells," or some other unmeaning balderdash according to the position of the sun. When the farmhouse needed painting, instead of renewing the soft and lovely white that had made it a grateful sight to theeye for centuries, Noah had it covered with pitch from roof to cellar, until the whole neighborhood began to smell like a tar barrel. And then he began his work upon this precious ark of his—Noah's Folly, the neighbors called it; placed in the middle of our old cow-pasture, twenty-five miles from the sea; about as big as a summer hotel, and filled with stalls instead of state-rooms! He mortgaged the farm to pay the first instalment on it, and when I asked him how on earth he ever expected to liquidate the indebtedness he smilingly replied that the deluge would take care of everything that stood in need of liquidation when the date of maturity came round. He was even flippant on the subject.
"Don't talk about falling dew," he remarked. "There'll be something dewing around here before many days that will make you landlubbers wish your rubberswere eight or nine million sizes larger than the ones you bought last February; and as for liquidation—well, father dear, you can take my word for it that when this mortgage of mine is presented at my office for payment by its present holder there will be liquid enough around to float a new bond issue in case I can't pay in spot cash. If that is not satisfactory to my creditors, you still need not worry. I have a definite fund in mind that will take care of them."
"That is a relief," said I, innocently. "But may I ask what fund you refer to?"
"Certainly, father dear," he replied. "I refer to the Sinking Fund which will be in full working order the minute the deluge arrives."
This was about all the satisfaction I was ever able to get out of my son on the subject of his Ark, and after two or three hundred years I stopped arguing with him on the futile extravagance of his course.As we have seen in the last chapter of my memoirs, I did write a bit of verse on the subject which made him very angry, but beyond that I did nothing, and then the great scandal came!
Noah regrets having shipped guinea pigs.Noah regrets having shipped guinea pigs.
It was the blackest hour of my life when it came to be rumored in and about Enochsville that Noah, now grown to independent estate, had method in his madness, and was about to embark upon a questionable financial enterprise. One of the yellow journals of the day—for we had them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high—one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termedThe International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lendcolor to its sensational accusations. It could not be denied, as was stated inThe Enochsville Evening Gad, that Noah had built a large, unwieldy vessel of his own designing in the old pasture up back of our Enochsville farm, miles away from tide-level. That it resembled whatThe Gadcalled a cross between a cow-barn and a Lehigh Valley Coal-Barge, was evident to anybody who had merely glanced at it. But what was its apparent purpose? asked the reporter ofThe Gad. Stated to be the housing of a menagerie during a projected cruise of forty-odd days! "What philanthropy!" ejaculated the editor ofThe Gad. What a kindly old soul was the projector of this wonderful enterprise, that he should take a couple of tired old elephants off on a Mediterranean trip out of the sheer kindness of his heart! Was it not the acme of generosity for a man who had lately been so hard up thathe had mortgaged his farm to go to the expense of building a huge floating barge on which the gorillas, giraffes, and rhinoceri of the land, having lately shown signs of enfeebled health, might take a winter's trip to the Riviera, or to the recuperative sands of the Sahara?
The article was indeed a scathing arraignment, a masterpiece of ridicule, but as it went on it became even worse, for it now got down to the making of serious charges against my son's integrity.
"Such are the alleged purposes of this project," saidThe Gad. "Let us now consider its real purpose, far more insidious than any one has hitherto suspected, but which is now seen to be that ofseparating the widows and orphans of this land from their accumulated savings, and diverting them into thepockets of Noah and his family!"
I thought I should sink through thefloor when this met my eyes, and I was appalled when I read on and realized how many thousands of people would believe the plausible tale of villanyThe Gadhad managed to construct out of a few innocent facts. Noah's plan was in brief stated to be a scheme for the impoverishment of innocent investors, by selling them shares of stock, both common and preferred, in his International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company. According to the writer of this infamous libel, immediately the vessel was finished at a cost of about $79.50, it was Noah's intention to incorporate his enterprise with himself as President and Treasurer, and Shem, Ham and Japhet as his Board of Directors, the capital being placed at the enormous sum of $100,000,000.
"This capitalization," said the exposure, "will be divided into fifty millions of preferred stock, and fifty millions of common, all of which will be sold to the public at par; subject to a first mortgage already existing, and held by Noah and his sons, which it is intended to foreclose, and the company reorganized, the minute the $100,000,000 of the public's money has passed into the treasurer's hands.
"Talk about yourdeluge!" continued the article. "This is indeed the biggest thing indelugesthis little old world has ever known. The Preadamite Steel Trust is a dewdrop alongside of it. Noah gets thesalvage, but thepeopleget thewater!"
Such was the attitude of the public toward my son's great project, and all I could ever get him to say in reply to these and other equally nefarious charges was, while he had intended to have quarters for every kind of beast on board his boat, he had now definitely decided to leave outMastodons, Muck-Rakers and Yellow Journalists!
Verily there seems to be some foundation to the belief that devotion to the life of a seaman makes a man callous to assaults on his personal reputation!
The recent visit of King Ptush to our wild districts in search of a fresh hunting-ground for himself and his son, Prince Ptutt, brought about a very serious condition of affairs in respect to the mastodon, or what some persons refer to as the Antediluvians. This most distinguished personage, wearying of the affairs of state in his own land, gave over the reins of government for a while to his Grand Vizier, and on behalf of the Nimrodian Institution, a Museum of Natural and Unnatural History in his own capital city, came hither to study the fauna and flora of our district, and incidentally totake back with him a variety of stuffed specimens of our more conspicuous wild beasts for exhibition purposes. Entirely unaware of His Majesty's unerring aim in hitting large surfaces at short range, we welcomed him cordially to our midst, and rather unwisely presented him with the freedom of the jungle, a ceremony which carried with it the privilege of bagging anything he could hit with his slungshot, in season or out of it. The results of His Majesty's visit were appalling, for he had not been with us more than six weeks before his enthusiasm getting the better of his sportsmanship he turned the jungle into a zoological shambles, from which it is never likely to recover. On his first day's outing, to our dismay he brought down thirty-seven ring-tailed ornithorhyncusses, eighteen pterodactyls, three brace of dodo, and a domesticated diplodocus, and then assured us that hedidn't know what could be the matter with his aim that he had missed so many. The next day he rose early, and while the rest of his suite were sleeping went out unattended, returning before breakfast was over with a tally-card showing a killing of thirteen dinosaurs, twenty-seven megatheriums, and about six tons of chlamy-dophori, not to mention a mammoth jack-rabbit that some idiot had told him was the only specimen in the world of the monodelphian mollycoddle. The situation became very embarrassing to us because we were on excellent terms with King Ptush and his subjects, and we did not wish to do anything to offend either of them, but here was a case where in the interests of our own fauna something had to be done. Going on at the rate in which he had begun it was easy to see that unless somebody got out an injunction restraining him from shooting betweenmeals it would not be many days before there wasn't a prehistoric beast left in the whole country. It was a mighty ticklish position for all of us. If we withdrew the freedom of the jungle His Majesty might go home in a huff and declare war against us, and with Noah's Ark as the sum total of our navy, and that built in a ten-acre lot thirty miles from the coast, and no army of any sort standing or sitting, we could hardly afford a complication of that kind. Our wisest counsellors were called together to consider the situation, but they were all men given to many words and lovers of disputation, so that what with the framing of the original resolution, and the time consumed in debating the amendments offered thereto, it was quite three months before any definite conclusion was reached, and it was then found when the resolution came up to its final vote thatit had nothing whatever to do with the subject the conference was called to discuss, but had been transformed into an Act providing for an increased duty on guinea-pigs imported from Sumatra. From that day to this I have had little belief in that kind of popular government which provides for the election of public servants whose chief end and aim seems to be to thwart the public will.
EXTRA!!EXTRA!!
It was then that my fellow-citizens, availing themselves of a certain diplomacy of method which I was said to possess, called upon me to undertake a personal interview with King Ptush, and to see what could be done to stay his voracious appetite for the slaying of our mammalia. Always ready to serve my fellows in their hour of need, I undertook the mission, and appeared bright and early one morning at his encampment, unannounced, thinking it better to seem to happen inupon him in a neighborly fashion than to make a national affair of my mission by coming formally and with official pomp into his presence. At the hour of my arrival the great king was standing on the stump of a red cedar, delivering a lecture to his entourage upon "The Whole Duty of Man, With a Few Remarks About Everything Else." But even then he was not neglectful of his opportunities as a Nimrod, for every now and then he would punctuate his sentences with a shot at a casual bit of fauna passing by, either on the earth or flying, never pausing in his lecture, but nevertheless bringing to an untimely end thirty-eight griffins, seven paralellopipedon, a gumshurhynicus, forty google-eyed plutocratidæ, and a herd of June-bugs grazing in a neighboring pasture—the latter wholly domesticated, by the way, and used by their owner as spile-drivers for a dike he was buildingin apprehension of Noah's predicted flood. It was then that I began to get some insight into the character of this wonderful person, for as I sat there listening to his discourse, delivered at the rate of five hundred words a minute, and apparently covering seven or eight subjects not necessarily corollary or collateral to each other, at once, and watched him simultaneously bringing down with unerring aim this tremendous bag of game, something of the man's intrinsic nature was revealed to me. His strength, of which we had heard much from travelers in his own land, lay in an almost scientific lack of concentration, backed up by a vocabulary of tremendous scope, and a condition of optical near-sightedness that enabled him to see but obscurely further than the end of his nose. These attributes gave him the power to discuss innumerable subjects coeternally, if not coherently, using his vocabularywith such skill that his meaning depended entirely upon the interpretation of his remarks by individual hearers, while the limitations of vision caused him, on the sudden appearance of masses of any sort, to shoot at them impulsively, regardless of such minor details as consequences. As a result of these gifts he was ever hitting something with either the arrows of speech or the slungshot, which produced a public impression of ceaseless activity and of material accomplishment. In addition to this it was his wont to do all things smiling with an almost boyish manifestation of pleasure, so that he endeared himself to the people and was pronounced in some respects likeable even by his enemies.
When his lecture was over he descended from his improvised platform and greeted me most cordially.
"Deeee-lighted!" was the exact word heused as he took my hand and shook it until my arm worked indifferently well in its socket.
I was not aware that His Highness had ever heard of me before, but it was not long before I was more than glad that I had come, for it transpired that I was the one person in all creation that he had most wished to meet, though for what particular purpose he did not make clear. In any event, so cordial was his reception of me that for three or four weeks I had not the heart to mention the particular object of my mission, and even then I was not permitted to do so because at any time when I felt that the psychological moment had been reached he would talk of other things, his scientific lack of concentration of which I have already spoken enabling him with much grace to be reminded of an experience in the Transvaal by a chance allusion of my own to thepeculiar habits of the Antillean Sardine. In the meanwhile the work of slaughter was going on apace, and whole species were gradually becoming extinct. Exactly five weeks after my arrival the last Diplodocus in the world breathed its last. Two days later the world's visible supply of Pterodactyls passed into the realms of the annihilated. The Dodo, the largest and sweetest song-bird I have ever known, the only bird in all the primeval forests possessed of a diaphragm capable of expressing harmonies of what for want of a better term I may call a Wagnerian range, quickly followed suit, and in its train, alas! went the others, Creosauri, Dicosauri, Thracheotomi, Megacheropodæ, Manicuridæ, and the Willumjay, the latter a gigantic parrot with a voice like silver that rang continuously through the forests like a huge fire bell. At the endof the tenth week of my mission a message was received from Noah.
"Dear Grandpa," he wrote: "Can't you do something to stave off King Ptush? In making up my passenger-list I can't get hold of enough mammals to fill an inside room. I have been through the country with a fine-tooth comb, and as far as I can find out there isn't a prehistoric beast left in creation. If this thing goes on much longer I shall be compelled to load up with a cargo of coon-cats, armadillos, hippopotami and Plymouth rocks. Get a move on!
"Noah."
My first impulse was to hand this letter without a word to His Majesty, but on second thoughts I decided not to do this, since it might involve me in a humiliating explanation of my grandson's foolish obsession about the impending flood. I hadtoo much pride to wish King Ptush to know that I had a human brain-storm on the list of my posterity, so I threw the brick upon which the letter was engraved into a neighboring fish-pond, and resolved to get rid of His Majesty by strategy. For three nights I pondered over my plan of operations, and then the great method came to me like the dawning of the sun after a night of abysmal darkness. I went to the royal tent and discovered His Majesty hard at work chiseling out an article on "How I Brought Down My First Proterosaurus" on a slab of granite he had brought with him. As I approached he smiled broadly, and with a wave of his hand called my attention to the previous day's bag. It covered a ten-acre lot.
"There isn't sawdust enough in creation to stuff half of these beasts," he remarked proudly. "I hardly know what I shall do about that."
"Better bury them in the mud," I suggested, "and let them petrify."
He seemed pleased with the idea, and later put it into operation.
"Fossils are not so susceptible to moths," he observed as he gave orders for their immersion in a Triassic mud-puddle of huge proportions. "That was a good idea of yours, Methuselah."
"I have a better one than that," I returned, seeing at last an opening for my strategic movement. "Why should a man of Your Majesty's prowess waste his time on such insignificant creatures as these, when the whole country is ringing with complaints of an animal a thousand times as large, and that no one hereabouts has ever dared attempt to pursue?"
He was on the alert instantly.
"What animal do you refer to?" hedemanded, his interest becoming so deep that he put four pairs of eyeglasses upon his royal nose, so that he could see me better.
"It belongs to the family of Rodents," I replied. "It is without any exception the biggest rat in the history of our mammals. It is a combination of the Castoridæ, the Chinchillidæ, the Dodgastidæ, and the Lagomydian Leporidæ, with just a dash of the Dippydoodle on the maternal side."
His Majesty gave a sigh of disappointment, and resumed his writing.
"I haven't come here to shoot rats," he observed coldly, removing the three extra pairs of spectacles from his nose. "I am a huntsman, not a trapper."
"Your Majesty does not understand that this is no ordinary rat," I returned calmly. "If I may be permitted to continue, what would Your Highness thinkof a rat that was several thousand feet higher than the pyramids, that has lived continuously for thousands of years, and is as fresh and green in spirit as on the day it was born? Suppose I were to tell you that so great is its strength that I have myself seen a whole herd of aboriginal elephants lying asleep upon its broad back? What would you say if I told you that its epidermis is so thick that if there were such a thing as a steam-drill in creation six hundred of them could bore away at it night and day for as many years without making any visible impression thereon?"
He again put down his chisel, and laid the hammer aside, as he ranged the extra eyeglasses along the bridge of his nose.
"Colonel Methuselah," he said, incisively biting off his words, "if you told me anything of the kind I should say that you are what posterity will probably calla nature faker, and one of a perniciously invidious sort."
"I can bring affidavits to prove it, Your Majesty," said I.
"It is strange that I have never heard of it before," he mused.
"We are not particularly proud of it," I explained. "One may boast of the number of Discosauri one finds in one's hunting preserves, or the marvelous fish in one's lakes, or the birds of wondrous plumage that dwell in one's forests, but none ever ventures to speak of the number or quality of rats that infest the locality."
"You say it overtops a pyramid?" he demanded.
"I do," I replied. "The exact estimate of its height is sixteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-four feet!"
"Great Snakes!" he cried. "Why, he must be a perfect mountain!"
"He is," I replied. "He is so tall thatsummer and winter the top of his head is covered with snow."
This was too much for King Ptush. He rose up immediately from his seat and summoned his entourage.
"You will make ready for a strenuous afternoon," he said to them sharply. "I am going after the biggest game that history records. Colonel Methuselah has just told me of a quarry alongside of which all that we have landed in the past months sinks into insignificance."
"You do well to call it a quarry," I cried. "There never was a better—and it is only ten miles from here as the griffin flies."
The king's face flushed with joy at the prospect, but suddenly a look of perplexity came into his eyes.
"By the way," he said, "how shall we bring him down—with a slungshot or a catapult?"