Elbow-Room Part 27

"'Oh, I dunno; I don't care so very much about it.'"

"'Well, I'll read you one verse of the "Lines to Hannah." He says--to Hannah, mind you--

"The little birds sing sweetly In the weeping willows green, The village girls dress neatly-- Oh, tell me, do I dream?"

Now, you see, Grady, that is what is unseating my mind. A man can't stand more than a certain amount of that kind of thing. What do the public care whether he is dreaming or whether he is drunk? What does Hannah care? Why, they don't care a cent. Now, do they?

"'Not a red cent.'

"'Of course not. And yet Markley sends me another poem, ent.i.tled "Despondency," in which he exclaims,

"Oh, bury me deep in the ocean blue, Where the roaring billows laugh; Oh, cast me away on the weltering sea, Where the dolphins will bite me in half."

Now, Mr. Grady, if you can find a competent a.s.sa.s.sin, I wouldn't make it a point with him to oblige Mr. Markley. I don't care particularly to have the poet buried in the weltering sea. If he can't find a roaring billow, I'll be perfectly satisfied to have him chucked into a creek. And I dare say that it'll make no material difference whether the dolphins gobble him or the catfish and eels nibble him up. It's all the same in the long run. Mention this to your murderer when you speak to him, will you? Now, I'll show you why this thing takes all the heart out of me. In his poem ent.i.tled "Longings" he uses this language:

"Oh, sing to me, darling, a sweet song to-night, While I bask in the smile of thine eyes, While I kiss those dear lips in the dark silent room, And whisper my saddening good-byes."

Now, you see how it is yourself, Grady, don't you? How is she going to sing to him while he kisses those lips, and how is he going to whisper good-bye? Isn't that awful slush? Now, isn't it? And then, if the room is dark, what I want to know is how he's going to tell whether her eyes are smiling or not? Mr. Grady, either the man is insane or I am; and if your butcher is going to stab Markley, you'll oblige me by telling him that I want him to jab him deep, and maybe fill him up with poison or something to make it absolutely certain.

"'I know that when he sent me that poem about "The Unknown" I pa.r.s.ed it, and examined it with a microscope, and sent it around to a chemist's to be a.n.a.lyzed, but hang me if I know yet what he's driving at when he says,

"The uffish spectral gleaming of that wild resounding clang Came hooting o'er the margin of the dusky moors that hang Like palls of inky darkness where the hoa.r.s.e, weird raven calls, And the bhang-drunk Hindoo staggers on and on until he falls."

Isn't that--Well, now, isn't that just the most fearful mess of stuff that was ever ground out of a lunatic asylum?'

"'It's the awfullest I ever saw.'

"'Well, then, I get eighteen of them a week, and they madden me.

They keep my brain in a frenzied whirl. Grady, this man must die.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature. I have a wife and children; I conduct a great paper; I educate the public mind. My life is valuable to my country. Destroy this poet, and future generations will praise your name. He must be wiped out, exterminated, obliterated from the face of the earth. Kill him dead and bury him deep, and fix him in so's he will stay down, and bring in the bill for the tombstone. I leave the case to you. You need not tell me you have done this job. When the poems cease to come to me, I will know that he is dead. That will settle it. Good-morning.'"

It is believed that the poet must have been warned by Grady, for the supplies suddenly ceased; and Markley is saving up his effusions for some other victim.

But the major has other persecutors. One of them came into the editorial-room of the _Patriot_ during one of those very hot days in June. Major Slott was perspiring in an effort to hammer out an article on "The Necessity for Speedy Resumption." The visitor seized a chair and nudged up close to the major. Then he said,

"My name is Partridge. I called to show you a little invention of mine."

"Haven't got time to look at it. I'm busy."

"I see you are. Won't keep you more'n a minute" (removing his hat).

"Look at that hat and tell me how it strikes you."

"Oh, don't bother me! I'm not interested in hats just now."

"I know you ain't, and that's not a hat. That's Partridge's Patent Atmospheric Refresher. Looks exactly like a high hat, don't it? Now, what's the thing you want most this kind of weather?"

"The thing I want most is to have you skip out of here."

"What everybody wants is to keep cool, of course. Now, how are you going to do it? Why, if you know when you are well off, you will do it with this hat. But how? I will explain. If you compress air until it attains a considerable pressure, and then suddenly release it, the rapid expansion causes the air to absorb heat and to produce quite a marked degree of cold. You know this, of course?"

"I wish you'd compress _your_ air, and then expand it in the ears of somebody besides me."

"Now, in my invention I have utilized this beautiful law of nature in a manner that is certain to confer an inestimable blessing upon the human race. This hat is really made of light boiler iron covered with silk. The compressed air is contained in it. At the present moment it is subjected to a pressure of eighty-seven pounds to the square inch.

If that hat should explode while I am sitting here, it would blow the roof off of this building."

"So it killed you I wouldn't care."

"Well, sir, the way I work this wonderful appliance is this: The air-pump is concealed in the small of my back, under my coat. A pipe connects it with the receiver in my hat, and there is a kind of crank running down my right trouser leg and fastened to my boot, so that the mere act of walking pumps the air into the receiver. But how do I effect the cooling process? Listen: Another pipe comes from the receiver and empties into a kind of a sheet-iron undershirt, perforated with holes, which I wear beneath my outside shirt--"

"If you'd wear something _over_ that shirt, so as to hide the dirt, you'd be more agreeable."

"Now, s'posin' it's a warm day. I'm going along the street with the air-crank in operation. The receiver is full. I want to cool off. I pull the string which runs down my left sleeve; the air rushes from the receiver, suddenly expands about my body, and makes me feel so cold that I wish I had brought my overcoat with me."

"I wish to gracious you'd go home and get it now."

"You see, then, that this invention is of the utmost value and importance, and my idea in calling upon you was to give you a chance to mention and describe it in your paper, so that the public might know about it. You are the only editor I have revealed the secret to.

I thought I'd give you the first chance to become a benefactor of your race."

"I'm the kind of benefactor that charges one dollar a line for such philanthropy."

"To a.s.sure yourself that the machine is perfect you must try it for yourself. Just stand up and take your coat off. Then I'll put the hat on your head, screw the pump into the small of your back and fix the other machinery down your legs."

"I'll see you hanged first."

"Well, then, I'll put it on myself and ill.u.s.trate the theory for you.

You see the rod here in my trousers? This is the air-pump here, just above my suspender b.u.t.tons. The hat now contains about six atmospheres. Now I am ready to move. See? You observe how it works?

The only noise you hear is a slight click of the valve in the pump. A couple more turns, and you put your hand on my shirt-collar and feel how near zero it is. I will get the pressure up to one hundred pounds before I----"

BANG!!!

As soon as the major began to realize the situation he crawled out from beneath his overturned desk, wiped the contents of the inkstand from his face and hair with the copy of that unfinished article upon "The Necessity for Speedy Resumption," and looked about him. Mr. Partridge was lying in the corner with a splintered table over his legs, his head in a spittoon, and fragments of ruined machinery bursting out through enormous rents in his trousers and his coat. His cast-iron undershirt protruded in jagged points from a dozen orifices in his waistcoat. As the major took him by the leg to haul him out of the _debris_ Partridge opened his eyes wearily and said,

"Awful clap, wasn't it? You ought to've had lightning-rods on this building. Struck by lightning, wasn't I?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BANG!!!]

"You intolerable a.s.s!" exclaimed the major as the clerks and reporters came rushing in and began to place Partridge on his legs; "it wasn't lightning. It was that infernal machine that you wanted me to put on my head. If it had driven you under ground about forty feet, I'd have been glad, even if it had also demolished the building."

"What! the receiver exploded, did it? Too bad, ain't it? Blamed if I didn't think she was strong enough to bear twice that pressure. I must have made a mistake in my calculations, however," said Partridge, pinning up his clothes and holding his handkerchief to his b.l.o.o.d.y nose; "I'll have another one made, and come around to show you the invention to better advantage."

"If you do, I'll brain you with an inkstand," said the major.

Then Partridge limped out, and the major, abandoning the subject of resumption, began a fresh editorial upon "The Extraordinary Prevalence of Idiots at the Present Time."

The _Patriot_ has shown a remarkable amount of enterprise lately in obtaining, or professing to obtain, an interview with the Wandering Jew. The reader can form his own estimate of the value of the report, which appeared in the _Patriot_ in the following fashion: