The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) by Marshall P. Wilder (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📗

thought of the pen-drawings and looked in vain for them.[Pg 1774]

"What did you do with the W. B. jokes, Jimmy?" she asked.

"I didn't do anything with them. Don't tell me they're lost!"—in mock concern.

"They seem to be; I can't find them anywhere."

"Oh, they'll turn up again all right," said Jimaboy; and he went on with his polishing.

They did turn up, most surprisingly. Three days later, Isobel was glancing through the thirty-odd pages of the swollen Sunday Times, and she gave a little shriek.

"Horrors!" she cried; "the Times has printed those ridiculous jokes of ours, and run them as advertisements!"

"What!" shouted Jimaboy.

"It's so; see here!"

It was so, indeed. On the "Wit and Humor" page, which was half reading matter and half advertising, the Post-Graduate School of W. B. figured as large as life, with very fair reproductions of Isobel's drawings heading the displays.

"Heavens!" ejaculated Jimaboy; and then his first thought was the jealous author's. "Isn't it the luckiest thing ever that the spirit didn't move me to sign those things?"

"You might as well have signed them," said Isobel. "You've given our street and number."

"My kingdom!" groaned Jimaboy. "Here—you lock the door behind me, while I go hunt Hasbrouck. It's a duel with siege guns at ten paces, or a suit for damages with him."

He was back again in something under the hour, and his face was haggard.

"We are lost!" he announced tragically. "There is nothing for it now but to run."[Pg 1775]

"How ever did it happen?" queried Isobel.

"Oh, just as simply and easily as rolling off a log—as such things always happen. Lantermann saw the things on the desk, and your sketches caught him. He took 'em down to show to Hasbrouck, and Hasbrouck, meaning to do us a good turn, marked the skits up for the 'Wit and Humor' page. The intelligent make-up foreman did the rest: says of course he took 'em for ads. and run 'em as ads."

"But what does Mr. Hasbrouck say?"

"He gave me the horse laugh; said he would see to it that the advertising department didn't send me a bill. When I began to pull off my coat he took it all back and said he was all kinds of sorry and would have the mistake explained in to-morrow's paper. But you know how that goes. Out of the hundred and fifty thousand people who will read those miserable squibs to-day, not five thousand will see the explanation to-morrow. Oh, we've got to run, I tell you; skip, fly, vanish into thin air!"

But sober second thought came after a while to relieve the panic pressure. 506 Hayward Avenue was a small apartment-house, with a dozen or more tenants, lodgers, or light housekeepers, like the Jimaboys. All they would have to do would be to breathe softly and make no mention of the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Then the other tenants would never know, and the postman would never know. Of course, the non-delivery of the mail might bring troublesome inquiry upon the Times advertising department, but, as Jimaboy remarked maliciously, that was none of their funeral.

Accordingly, they breathed softly for a continuous week, and carefully avoided personal collisions with the postman. But temporary barricades are poor defenses at the best. One day as they were stealthily scurrying out to[Pg 1776] luncheon—they had acquired the stealthy habit to perfection by this time—they ran plump into the laden mail carrier in the lower hall.

"Hello!" said he; "you are just the people I've been looking for. I have a lot of letters and postal cards for The Post-Graduate School of something or other, 506 Hayward. Do you know anything about it?"

They exchanged glances. Isobel's said, "Are you going to make me tell the fib?" and Jimaboy's said, "Help!"

"I—er—I guess maybe they belong to us"—it was the man who weakened. "At least, it was our advertisement that brought them. Much obliged, I'm sure." And a breathless minute later they were back in their rooms with the fateful and fearfully bulky packet on the desk between them and such purely physical and routine things as luncheon quite forgotten.

"James Augustus Jimaboy! What have you done?" demanded the accusing angel.

"Well, somebody had to say something, and you wouldn't say it," retorted Jimaboy.

"Jimmy, did you want me to lie?"

"That's what you wanted me to do, wasn't it? But perhaps you think that one lie, more or less, wouldn't cut any figure in my case."

"Jimmy, dear, don't be horrid. You know perfectly well that your curiosity to see what is in those letters was too much for you."

Jimaboy walked to the window and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. It was their first quarrel, and being unfamiliar with the weapons of that warfare, he did not know which one to draw next. And the one he did draw was a tin dagger, crumpling under the blow.

"It has been my impression all along that curiosity was a feminine weakness," he observed to the windowpanes.[Pg 1777]

"James Jimaboy! You know better than that! You've Said a dozen times in your stories that it was just the other way about—you know you have. And, besides, I didn't let the cat out of the bag."

Here was where Jimaboy's sense of humor came in. He turned on her quickly. She was the picture of righteous indignation trembling to tears. Whereupon he took her in his arms, laughing over her as she might have wept over him.

"Isn't this rich!" he gasped. "We—we built this thing on our specialty, and here we are qualifying like cats and dogs for our great mission to a quarrelsome world. Listen, Bella, dear, and I'll tell you why I weakened. It wasn't curiosity, or just plain, every-day scare. There is sure to be money in some of these letters, and it must be returned. Also, the other people must be told that it was only a joke."

"B-but we've broken our record and qu-quarreled!" she sobbed.

"Never mind," he comforted; "maybe that was necessary, too. Now we can add another course to the curriculum and call it the Exquisite Art of Making Up. Let's get to work on these things and see what we are in for."

They settled down to it in grim determination, cutting out the down-town luncheon and munching crackers and cheese while they opened and read and wrote and returned money and explained and re-explained in deadly and wearisome repetition.

"My land!" said Jimaboy, stretching his arms over his head, when Isobel got up to light the lamps, "isn't the credulity of the race a beautiful thing to contemplate? Let's hope this furore will die down as suddenly as it jumped up. If it doesn't, I'm going to make Hasbrouck furnish us a stenographer and pay the postage."[Pg 1778]

But it did not die down. For a solid fortnight they did little else than write letters and postal cards to anxious applicants, and by the end of the two weeks Jimaboy was starting up in his bed of nights to rave out the threadbare formula of explanation: "Dear Madam: The ad. you saw in the Sunday Times was not an ad.; it was a joke. There is no Post-Graduate School of W. B. in all the world. Please don't waste your time and ours by writing any more letters."

The first rift in the cloud was due to the good offices of Hasbrouck. He saw matter of public interest in the swollen jest and threw the columns of the Sunday Times open to Jimaboy. Under the racking pressure, the sentimentalist fired volley upon volley of scathing ridicule into the massed ranks of anxious inquirers, and finally came to answering some of the choicest of the letters in print.

"Good!" said Hasbrouck, when the "Jimaboy Column" in the Sunday paper began to be commented on and quoted; and he made Jimaboy an offer that seemed like sudden affluence.

But the crowning triumph came still later, in a letter from the editor of one of the great magazines. Jimaboy got it at the Times office, and some premonition of its contents made him keep it until Isobel could share it.

"We have been watching your career with interest," wrote the great man, "and we are now casting about for some one to take charge of a humorous department to be called 'Bathos and Pathos,' which we shall, in the near future, add to the magazine. May we see more of your work, as well as some of Mrs. Jimaboy's sketches?

"O Jimmy, dear, you found yourself at last!"

But his smile was a grin. "No," said he; "we've just got our diplomas from the Post-Graduate School of W. B.—that's all."[Pg 1779]

A RULE OF THREE BY WALLACE RICE

There is a rule to drink, I think,
A rule of three
That you'll agree
With me
Can not be beat
And tends our lives to sweeten:
Drink ere you eat,
And while you eat,
And after you have eaten!
[Pg 1780]

HOW THE MONEY GOES BY JOHN G. SAXE

How goes the Money?—Well,
I'm sure it isn't hard to tell;
It goes for rent, and water-rates,
For bread and butter, coal and grates,
Hats, caps, and carpets, hoops and hose,—
And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?—Nay,
Don't everybody know the way?
It goes for bonnets, coats and capes,
Silks, satins, muslins, velvets, crapes,
Shawls, ribbons, furs, and furbelows,—
And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?—Sure,
I wish the ways were something fewer;
It goes for wages, taxes, debts;
It goes for presents, goes for bets,
For paint, pommade, and eau de rose,—
And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?—Now,
I've scarce begun to mention how;
It goes for laces, feathers, rings,
Toys, dolls—and other baby-things,
Whips, whistles, candies, bells and bows,—
[Pg 1781]And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?—Come,
I know it doesn't go for rum;
It goes for schools and sabbath chimes,
It goes for charity—sometimes;
For missions, and such things as those,—
And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?—There!
I'm out of patience, I declare;
It goes for plays, and diamond pins,
For public alms, and private sins,
For hollow shams, and silly shows,—
And that's the way the Money goes!
[Pg 1782]

A CAVALIER'S VALENTINE (1644) BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

The sky was like a mountain mere,
The lilac buds were brown,
What time a war-worn cavalier
Rode into Taunton-town.
He sighed and shook his head forlorn;
"A sorry lot is mine,"
He said, "who have this merry morn
Pale Want for Valentine."

His eyes, like heather-bells at dawn,
Were blue and brave and bold;
Against his cheeks, now wan and drawn,
His love-locks tossed their gold.
And as he rode, beyond a wall
With ivy overrun,
His glance upon a maid did fall,
A-sewing in the sun.

As sweet was she as wilding thyme,
A boon, a bliss, a grace:
It made the heart blood beat in rhyme
To look upon her face.
He bowed him low in courtesy,
To her deep marvelling;
"Fair Mistress Puritan," said he,
[Pg 1783]"It is forward spring."

As when the sea-shell flush of morn
Throws night in rose eclipse,
So sunshine smiles, that instant born,
Brought brightness to her lips;
Her voice was modest, yet, forsooth,
It had a roguish ring;
"You, sir, of all should know that truth—
It is a forward spring!"
[Pg 1784]

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