The Wit and Humor of America Volume V Part 25

THE DUTIFUL MARINER[4]

BY WALLACE IRWIN

'Twas off the Eastern Filigrees-- Wizzle the pipes o'ertop!-- When the gallant Captain of the Cheese Began to skip and hop.

"Oh stately man and old beside, Why dost gymnastics do?

Is such example dignified To set before your crew?"

"Oh hang me crew," the Captain cried, "And scuttle of me ship.

If I'm the skipper, blarst me hide!

Ain't I supposed to skip?

"I'm growing old," the Captain said; "Me dancing days are done; But while I'm skipper of this ship I'll skip with any one.

"I'm growing grey," I heard him say, "And I can not rest or sleep While under me the troubled sea Lies forty spasms deep.

"Lies forty spasms deep," he said; "But still me trusty sloop Each hour, I wot, goes many a knot And many a bow and loop.

"The hours are full of knots," he said, "Untie them if ye can.

In vain I've tried, for Time and Tied Wait not for any man.

"Me fate is hard," the old man sobbed, "And I am sick and sore.

Me aged limbs of rest are robbed And skipping is a bore.

"But Duty is the seaman's boast, And on this gallant ship You'll find the skipper at his post As long as he can skip."

And so the Captain of the Cheese Skipped on again as one Who lofty satisfaction sees In duty bravely done.

[Footnote 4: From "Nautical Lays of a Landsman," by Wallace Irwin.

Copyright, 1904, by Dodd, Mead & Co.]

MELINDA'S HUMOROUS STORY

BY MAY McHENRY

Melinda was dejected. She told herself that she was groping in the vale of despair, that life was a vast, gray, echoing void. She decided that ambition was dead--a case of starvation; that friendship had slipped through too eagerly grasping fingers; that love--ah, _love_!--

"You'd better take a dose of blue-ma.s.s," her aunt suggested when she had sighed seven times dolefully at the tea table.

"Not _blue_-ma.s.s. Any other kind of ma.s.s you please, but _not_ blue,"

Melinda shuddered absently.

No; she was not physically ill; the trouble was deeper--soul sickness, acute, threatening to become chronic, that defied allopathic doses of favorite and other philosophers, that would not yield even to hourly repet.i.tion of the formula handed down from her grandmother--"If you can not have what you want, try to want what you have." Yet she could lay her finger on no bleeding heart-wound, on no definite cause. It was true that the deeply a.n.a.lytical, painstakingly interesting historical novel on which she had worked all winter had been sent back from the publishers with a briefly polite note of thanks and regrets; but as she had never expected anything else, that could not depress her. Also, the slump in G.C. Copper stock had forced her to give up her long-planned southern trip and even to forego the consolatory purchase of a spring gown; but she had a mind that could soar above flesh-pot disappointments. Then, the Reverend John Graham;--but what John Graham did or said was nothing--absolutely nothing, to her.

So Melinda clenched her hands and moaned in the same key with the east wind and told the four walls of her room that she could not endure it; she must _do_ something. Then it was, that in a flash of inspiration, it came to her--she would write a humorous story.

The artistic fitness of the idea pleased her. She had always understood that humorists were marked by a deep-dyed melancholy, that the height of unhappiness was a vantage-ground from which to view the joke of existence. She would test the dictum; now, if ever, she would write humorously. The material was at hand, seething and crowding in her mind, in fact--the monumental dullness and complacent narrowness of the villagers, the egoism, the conceit, the bland shepherd-of-his-flock pomposity of John Graham. What more could a humorist desire? Yes; she would write.

Thoughts came quick and fast; words flowed in a fiery stream like lava that glows and rushes and curls and leaps down the mountain, sweeping all obstacles aside. (The figure did not wholly please Melinda, for everybody knows how dull and gray and uninteresting lava is when it cools, but she had no time to bother with another.) She felt the exultation, the joy and uplifting of spirit that is the reward--usually, alas, the sole reward--of the writer in the work of creation.

Then before the lava had time to cool she sent the story to the first magazine on her list with a name beginning with "A." It was her custom to send them that way, though sometimes with a desire to be impartial she commenced at "Z" and went up the list.

At the end of two weeks the wind had ceased blowing from the east.

Melinda decided that though life for her must be gray, echoing, void, yet would she make an effort for the joy of others. She would lift herself above the depression that enfolded her even as the buoyant hyacinths were cleaving their dark husks and lifting up the beauty and fragrance of their hearts to solace pa.s.sers-by. Therefore she ceased parting her hair in the middle and ordered a simple little frock from D----'s--hyacinth blue _voile_ with a lining that should whisper and rustle like the glad winds whisking away last year's leaves.

Then the day came when she strolled carelessly and unexpectantly down the village street to the post-office and there received a letter that bore on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the name of the magazine first on her list beginning with "A." A chill pa.s.sed along Melinda's spine. That humorous story--Could this mean?--It was too horrible to contemplate.

She took a short cut through the orchard and as she walked she tore off a corner and peeped into the envelope. Yes, there was a pale-blue slip of paper with serrated edges. She leaned against a Baldwin apple-tree to think.

How true it is that one should be prepared for the unexpected. Melinda had sent out many ma.n.u.scripts freighted with tingling hopes and eager aspirations and with the postage stamps that insured their prompt return; how was she to know, by what process of reasoning could she infer that this, that had been offered simply from force of habit, would be retained in exchange for an aesthetically tinted check? She anathematized the magazine editor. (That seems the proper thing to do with editors.) She wanted to know what business he had to keep that story after having led her to believe that it was his unbreakable custom to send them back. It was deception, she told the swelling Baldwin buds, base, deep-dyed, subtle deception. After baiting her on with his little, pink, printed rejection slips, he suddenly sprung a wicked trap.

It was some time before Melinda grew calm enough to read the editorial letter. It ran:

_"Dear Madam--We are glad to have your tender and delicately sympathetic picture of village life. There is a note of true sentiment and a generous appreciation of homely virtue marking this story for which we desire to add an especial word of praise. Check enclosed._

_"Very truly yours, "The Editor of A----."_

Melinda sank limply on the bleached, last year's gra.s.s at the foot of the tree. "Tender and delicately sympathetic picture"--"Generous appreciation!" She laughed feebly. The editor was pleased to be facetious. Having a fine sense of humor himself he showed his realization of the story by acknowledging it in the same vein of subtle satire.

She reread the letter and unfolded the slip of paper with serrated edges with changing emotions. After all it was not such a very bad story. She permitted herself to recall how humorous it was, how cleverly and keenly it laid bare the ridiculous, the unexpected, how it scintillated with wit and abounded in droll and subtle distinctions and descriptions--all--all at the expense of her nearest relatives and her dearest friends.

Melinda thought she would return the check and demand that her story be sent back to her or destroyed; but, reflecting that Punch's advice is applicable to other things than matrimony and suicide, she didn't. She resolutely put her literary Frankenstein behind her. She reasoned that in all probability the story would not be published during the lifetime of any of the originals of the characters; that even if the worst came to the worst, Mossdale was likely to remain in ignorance that would be blissful. The villagers were not wont to waste time on the printed word; in fact, such was the profundity of their unenlightenment, few of them had heard of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." Even John Graham paid little attention to the secular periodicals; besides, if absolutely necessary, John's attention might be diverted.

So Melinda went away on a visit. Her health demanded it. The doctor was unable to name her malady, but she herself diagnosed it as _magazinitis_.

Toward fall Melinda, entirely recovered, returned to Mossdale. Entirely recovered, yet she turned cold, unseeing eyes on the newsboy when he pa.s.sed through the car with his towering load of varicolored periodicals, and rather than be forced to the final resort of the unaccompanied traveler, she welcomed the advent of an acquaintance possessed of volubility of an ejaculatory, eruptive variety. After many gentle jets and spurts of gossip much remained to be told, as the lady hastily gathered up her impedimenta preparatory to alighting at her home station.

"How like me in the joy of seeing you, to forget! What a sweet, clever story! And to think of _you_ having something published in 'A----'! I never was more surprised than when Mr. Ferguson brought home the magazine. Those delicious Mossdale people! I could not endure that the dear things should not see and know at once. The lovely hamlet is so--so remote, and I knew you were traveling. What a pleasure to send them half a dozen copies that very evening!--Yes, porter, that, too--_Do_ run down to see me soon, dear--Now _do_. _Good_-by!"

Melinda summoned the newsboy and bought the latest number of the magazine with a name beginning with "A." She turned to the list of "Contents" with feverish anxiety, then the book slid from her nerveless fingers. Her humorous story had been given to an eager public. She leaned back and gazed out at the flying telegraph poles and fields. Even the worthiest, the gravest, the finest, she reflected, has a face, that if seen in a certain light, will flash out the ignus fatuus of the ridiculous; but it is not usually considered the office of friendship to turn on the betraying light. Oh, well, her relatives would forgive in time. Relatives _have_ to forgive. It was unfortunate that John Graham was not a relative. "One thing, I know now how much Mrs. Ferguson cares because I got those six votes ahead of her for the Thursday Club presidency--Half a dozen copies!" Melinda said aloud as she caught sight of the spire of the Mossdale Church.

Her Uncle Joe met her at the station and kissed her for the first time since she had put on long dresses. Notwithstanding a foolish prejudice against tobacco juice Melinda received the salute in a meek and contrite spirit.

"Notice how many citizens were hanging around underfoot on the depot platform--so as you kinder had to stop and shake hands to get 'em out o'

the way?" Uncle Joe queried as he turned the colts' heads toward home.

Melinda had noticed. "I suppose they came out to see the train come in,"

she suggested.

"Nope; not exactly." Uncle Joe explained, "Looking out for automo_biles_ and flying airships have made trains of cars seem mighty common up this way. Nope; the folks was out on account of you a-comin'."

"Me?" Having a guilty conscience Melinda glanced backward apprehensively and made a motion as though to dodge a missile.