Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad Part 21

"Mary had a little sham Whose hide was soft as cotton, And everywhere that Mary went The shammy too went trottin'."

sang the Unwiseman, dropping into poetry as was one of his habits when he was deeply moved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHAMOIS EVIDENTLY LIKED THIS VERSE FOR ITS EYES TWINKLED]

The chamois evidently liked this verse for its eyes twinkled and it laid its head gently on the Unwiseman's knee and looked at him appealingly as if to say, "More of that poetry please. You are a bard after my own heart." So the Unwiseman went on, keeping time to his verse by slight taps on the chamois' nose.

"It followed her to town one day Unto the Country Fair, And earned five hundred dollars just In shining silver-ware."

Whistlebinkie indulged in a loud whistle of mirth at this, which so startled the little creature that it leapt backward fifteen feet in the air and landed on top of a small pump at the rear of the yard, and stood there poised on its four feet just like the chamois we see in pictures standing on a sharp peak miles up in the air, trembling just a little for fear that Whistlebinkie's squeak would be repeated. A moment of silence seemed to cure this, however, for in less than two minutes it was back again at the Unwiseman's side gazing soulfully at him as if demanding yet another verse. Of course the Unwiseman could not resist--he never could when people demanded poetry from him, it came so very easy--and so he continued:

"The children at the Country Fair Indulged in merry squawks To see the shammy polishing The family knives and forks.

"The tablespoons, and coffee pots, The platters and tureens, The top of the mahogany, And crystal fire-screens."

"More!" pleaded the chamois with his soft eyes, snuggling its head close into the Unwiseman's lap, and the old gentleman went on:

"'O isn't he a wondrous kid!'

The wondering children cried.

We didn't know a shammy could Do such things if he tried.

"And Mary answered with a smile That dimpled up her chin 'There's much that shammy's cannot do, But much that shammy-skin.'"

Whistlebinkie's behavior at this point became so utterly and inexcusably boisterous with mirth that the confiding little chamois was again frightened away and this time it gave three rapid leaps into the air which landed it ultimately upon the ridge-pole of the chalet, from which it wholly refused to descend, in spite of all the persuasion in the world, for the rest of the afternoon.

"Very intelligent little animal that," said the Unwiseman, as he trudged his way home. "A very high appreciation of true poetry, inclined to make friendship with the worthy, and properly mistrustful of people full of strange noises and squeaks."

"He was awfully pretty, wasn't he," said Mollie.

"Yes, but he was better than pretty," observed the Unwiseman. "He could be made useful. Things that are only pretty are all very well in their way, but give me the useful things--like my kitchen-stove for instance.

If that kitchen-stove was only pretty do you suppose I'd love it the way I do? Not at all. I'd just put it on the mantel-piece, or on the piano in my parlor and never think of it a second time, but because it is useful I pay attention to it every day, polish it with stove polish, feed it with coal and see that the ashes are removed from it when its day's work is done. n.o.body ever thinks of doing such things with a plain piece of bric-a-brac that can't be used for anything at all. You don't put any coal or stove polish on that big Chinese vase you have in your parlor, do you?"

"No," said Mollie, "of course not."

"And I'll warrant that in all the time you've had that opal gla.s.s jug on the mantel-piece of your library you never shook the ashes down in it once," said the Unwiseman.

"Mity-goo-dreeson-wy!" whistled Whistlebinkie. "They-ain't never no ashes in it."

"Correct though ungrammatically expressed," observed the Unwiseman.

"There never are any ashes in it to be shaken down, which is a pretty good reason to believe that it is never used to fry potatoes on or to cook a chop with, or to roast a turkey in--which proves exactly what I say that it is only pretty and isn't half as useful as my kitchen-stove."

"It would be pretty hard to find anything useful for the bric-a-brac to do though," suggested Mollie, who loved pretty things whether they had any other use or not.

"It all depends on your bric-a-brac," said the Unwiseman. "I can find plenty of useful things for mine to do. There's my coal scuttle for instance--it works all the time."

"Coal-scuttles ain't bric-a-brac," said Whistlebinkie.

"My coal scuttle is," said the Unwiseman. "It's got a picture of a daisy painted on one side of it, and I gilded the handle myself. Then there's my watering pot. That's just as bric-a-bracky as any Chinese china pot that ever lived, but it's useful. I use it to water the flowers in summer, and to sift my lump sugar through in winter. Every pound of lump sugar you buy has some fine sugar with it and if you shake the lump sugar up in a watering pot and let the fine sugar sift through the nozzle you get two kinds of sugar for the price of one. So it goes all through my house from my piano to my old beaver hat--every bit of my bric-a-brac is useful."

"Wattonearth do-you-do with a-nold beevor-at?" whistled Whistlebinkie.

"I use it as a post-office box to mail cross letters in," said the Unwiseman gravely. "It's saved me lots of trouble."

"Cross letters?" asked Mollie. "You never write cross letters to anybody do you?"

"I'm doing it all the time," said the Unwiseman. "Whenever anything happens that I don't like I sit down and write a terrible letter to the people that do it. That eases off my feelings, and then I mail the letters in the hat."

"And does the Post-man come and get them?" asked Mollie.

"No indeed," said the Unwiseman. "That's where the beauty of the scheme comes in. If I mailed 'em in the post-office box on the lamp-post, the post-man would take 'em and deliver them to the man they're addressed to and I'd be in all sorts of trouble. But when I mail them in my hat n.o.body comes for them and n.o.body gets them, and so there's no trouble for anybody anywhere."

"But what becomes of them?" asked Mollie.

"I empty the hat on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every month and use them for kindling in my kitchen-stove," said the Unwiseman. "It's a fine scheme. I keep out of trouble, don't have to buy so much kindling wood, and save postage."

"That sounds like a pretty good idea," said Mollie.

"It's a first cla.s.s idea," returned Mr. Me, "and I'm proud of it. It's all my own and if I had time I'd patent it. Why I was invited to a party once by a small boy who'd thrown a snow-ball at my house and wet one of the shingles up where I keep my leak, and I was so angry that I sat down and wrote back that I regretted very much to be delighted to say that I'd never go to a party at his house if it was the only party in the world besides the Republican; that I didn't like him, and thought his mother's new spring bonnet was most unbecoming and that I'd heard his father had been mentioned for Alderman in our town and all sorts of disgraceful things like that. I mailed this right in my hat and used it to boil an egg with a month later, while if I'd mailed it in the post-office box that boy'd have got it and I couldn't have gone to his party at all."

"Oh--you went, did you?" laughed Mollie.

"I did and I had a fine time, six eclairs, three plates of ice cream, a pound of chicken salad, and a pocketful of nuts and raisins," said the Unwiseman. "He turned out to be a very nice boy, and his mother's spring bonnet wasn't hers at all but another lady's altogether, and his father had not even been mentioned for Water Commissioner. You see, my dear, what a lot of trouble mailing that letter in the old beaver hat saved me, not to mention what I earned in the way of food by going to the party which I couldn't have done had it been mailed in the regular way."

Here the old gentleman began to yodel happily, and to tell pa.s.sersby in song that he was a "Gay Swiss Laddy with a carpet-bag, That never knew fear of the Alpine crag, For his eye was bright and his conscience clear, As he leapt his way through the atmosphere, Tra-la-la, tra-la-la, Trala-lolly-O."

"I do-see-how-yood-make-that-shammy-useful," said Whistlebinkie. "Except to try your poems on and I don't b'lieve he's a good judge o' potery."

"He's a splendid judge of queer noises," said the Unwiseman, severely.

"He knew enough to jump a mile whenever you squeaked."

"Watt-else-coodie-doo?" asked Whistlebinkie through his hat. "You haven't any silver to keep polished and there aren't enough queer noises about your place to keep him busy."

"What else coodie-do?" retorted the Unwiseman, giving an imitation of Whistlebinkie that set both Mollie and the rubber doll to giggling. "Why he could polish up the handle of my big front door for one thing. He could lie down on his back and wiggle around the floor and make it shine like a lookin' gla.s.s for another. He could rub up against my kitchen stove and keep it bright and shining for a third--that's some of the things he couldie-doo, but I wouldn't confine him to work around my house. I'd lead him around among the neighbors and hire him out for fifty cents a day for general shammy-skin house-work. I dare say Mollie's mother would be glad to have a real live shammy around that she could rub her tea-kettles and coffee pots on when it comes to cleaning the silver."

"They can buy all the shammys they need at the grocer's," said Whistlebinkie scornfully.

"Dead ones," said the Unwiseman, "but nary a live shammy have you seen at the grocer's or the butcher's or the milliner's or the piano-tuner's.

That's where Wigglethorpe----"

"Wigglethorpe?" cried Whistlebinkie.

"Yes Wigglethorpe," repeated the Unwiseman. "That's what I have decided to call my shammy when I get him because he will wiggle."

"He don't thorpe, does he?" laughed Whistlebinkie.

"He thorpes just as much as you bink," retorted the Unwiseman. "But as I was saying, Wigglethorpe, being alive, will be better than any ten dead ones because he won't wear out, maids won't leave him around on the parlor floor, and just because he wiggles, the silver and the hardwood floors and front door handles will be polished up in half the time it takes to do it with a dead one. At fifty cents a day I could earn three dollars a week on Wigglethorpe----"

"Which would be all profit if you fed him on potery," said Whistlebinkie with a grin.